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WILLIAM • DAWES 



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I S'MPKiN- MA RSHALL & C? LONDON 




Class _ 
Book_ 



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ELIJER GOFF-. 



HIS 



A >-r 




RISTA1US 




OOK. 



BY 

WILLIAM DAWES, 

AUTHOR OF 
ELIJER GOFF; HIS TRAVELS, TRUBBLES, AND OTKUR AMOOZEMENTS.* 3 



LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. 
stationers' hall court. 

1872. 

All rights reserved. 






4811 



• 0| 

MANCHESTER : 

PRINTED BY JOHN HEYWOOD, AT THE EXCELSIOR WORKS, 

HULME HALL ROAD, 



NOTES TO THE CHRISTMAS BOOK. 




OR the information of those who have not 
read Elijer Goff's first book, I transfer to 
this page the Notes that appear in the second and 
third editions : — 

" Elijer Goff is not an American. He was born in Glouces- 
tershire, in 1822, and lived there for the first twenty years of 
his life. He then left England for the United States. During 
his thirty years' contact with the lower classes of Americans he 
has gradually become Yankeeised in speech and manner ; but 
beneath the surface he retains his old love for his native land, 
which an Englishman never lives long enough to forget." 

Any readers of this Christmas book who may feel 
interested in Elijer Goff, will find much of the history 
of his earlier life in his book of " Travels, Trubbles, 
and Othur Amoozements " above referred to.. 

W. D. 

St. Ann's Churchyard, Manchester, 
November, 1872. 




PREFIS, 



lASHUNT READURS!— 

This yere bock is a Kristmus book, like 
Jonson's dikshunary, and is intended fur all time. 

Them among yu as hev'nt red my " Travels, 
Trubbles, and Othur Amoozements," lied better 
du so at onct if yu wish tu du so without delay. 

Yu ken then enjy gud helth, any quantity of 
sperits, and a merry Kristmus prevyus tu krumblin 
intu appy dust. 

If thur's any pusson livin as konsiders this yere 
book wuth more than a shillin, he ken hev it at his 
own valuashun. 

If on the otherwise he konsiders it wuth less, he 
ken rite wun fur hisself. 

Pashunt readurs, 

Adoo. 

P.S. — If thur's any idears in this book as blongs 
tu any body eltz, he'd better klaim 'em at onct, or 
they will be sold tu defray expenses. 

E. G. 



fLIJER 10FF: 



HIS 



m?rm jot- 



PART I. 



HE almanak wos purty akkerate fur the 
next 2 days, and the dates follerd wun 
anothur in prazeworthy rotashun. If anythin wos 
troor than the rest it wos the inkonstant moon ; 
but how she ken face up without a blush after 
seein whot she hez seen thru the nites of her long 
watchin I'm not in a pozishun tu say. But troo 
tu time she du kum, and she du luk down on the 
wicked old world, and du see the doins in the 
darkness and don't blush. 

The days seemd very long, but they wos a bit 
diversified by unnatrel sensashuns ; and my attenshun 



ELIJER GOFF. 



wos every now and then direktid tu some new symptom 
of a rediklus natur. 

After indulgin hisself with fifty years of gud animal 
sperits, and a korrespondin period of miscellanyus 
appetites, as hev kept up a kontmual drain on the 
fmanshul system, a man don't take kindly tu gastro 
enteritis mukosa. Thur's sumthin about it as luks as 
if his stummick wos turnin ongrateful fur parst favors, 
and wosnt workin in hurmony with the sole. He 
feels that in spite of hevin done all he kud tu live fur 
■ever, his efforts wos likely tu pruv onsukcessful ; and 
he begins tu think that as fur as he's koncernd eternity 
is resolvin itself intu a mere questyun of time. 

The evenins parst plesantly. The widder sot and 
_red tu me as she hed done afore, and her vise groo 
.sweeter, and onct I told her the nitingales hed no 
-chance, and that the robins wosn't in it. But I wos 
.sorry I sed it, fur it seemd tu stop the muzik, and a 
tear kum intu her eye as she laid the book on wun 
.side. 

A woman's hart is like a kole mine; the furder 
yu go intu it the darker it gets, and if yu ventur in 
;tu fur the fire-damp of luv. '11 be ontu yu, and yu'il 
be smotherd alive. 



ELIJER GOFP 



When the books wos klosed the widder taut me 
chess. Fur hours we trifled with kings and queens as 
if they'd bin flesh and blud. At times the battels 
groo furyus and hot ; our gnites and bishops fote like 
devles; and we muvd our kassels about till in the 
konfushun I kuddent find my base of operashuns. 
Then when all wos lost and my nobility wos beaten, 
and thur kassels destroyd, and everythin bustid up, 
the widder wud luk up lite intu my face so cheerin 
and komfortin that I forgot the prevyus disasters, 
and prepared fur anothur defeat. 

Thurs nothin like a woman fur givin a man kurrige. 
It ain't as she guvs him any greater likin fur loss of 
blud, but afore her he's ashamd of bein a kowurd, and 
so he goes on gettin his hed krakd, till natur kindly 
steps in and throws up the spunge. 

He's rewarded with a vus of poetry inskribed on a 
pavin stun. 

All at onct, and quite onexpektid, kum my birth- 
day. It wos akkompanied with the equinokshul 
gales and immense loss of life. The widder persented 
me with a bible she hed jest bote at a fair. It lukd 
splendid under the naptha; but the kontents turnd 
out tu be arranged sumwot loose, the bindin hevin bin 



10 ELIJER GOFF. 



done by a pusson as wosn't interested in the subjeck* 
The fust 2 chapturs of Genesis wos follerd by a 
treatis on bile, and Revelashuns wos perceeded by a 
fu pages of loosish salms. It reminded me of a gnife 
I onct bote as turnd out on the follerin mornin 
tu be akorkskrew. The book of Jeremiar wos upside 
down, and Joel wos missin. The widder sed she 
didn't much like the front piktur. It wos Napoleon 
krossin the Alps. It lukked onsootabul, as the hoss 
wos painted green. 

But they ken sell anythin under naptha. 

/" onct hed a stall, and sold erbs as wud kure 
anythin. A man as hed a stall next mine at a gud 
many places performd mirrikles. I've seen a lame 
pusson peg up slo and krukked on krutches, drink a 
bottle of his fizzik, and walk galey off as if nothin 
hed happend. I've seen that same kripple kured 
hunderds of times. He wos a most obstinet kase, and 
follerd the doktor frum town tu town. The larst time 
I see him take fizzik he walkd off with a perliseman, as 
guv him three months fur presoomin tu be inkurable, 
and fur hidin his noze in anothur pusson's handkercher. 
He seemd cheerful and full of sperits. 

When a man gets tuk prizner in the battel of life 



ELIJER GOFF. II 



he shud be so. He's treated like a jool of priceless 
valu. He's tuk tu the biggest bildin in the town, and 
karefully put away under lok and ke jest as if he wos 
a diament. He's kept in helth fa by the doktur, is 
prayd at, tu ? and fur by the chaplin, is waited on by 
the officer in charge, hez everythin kooked fur him, and 
isn't allowd tu pay. The anxietis of the outer 
world air kep frum the inside of him with grate kare ; 
his kloze is pervided at the kounty xpense, and air 
in pint of kolor and strength all that the umblest kud 
desire. 

His kuntry '11 go furder. 

They'll take his wife and childern intu anothur 
large institooshun, and give 'em all the props necessary 
tu support life. Sumtimes the props '11 give way, and 
then they'll berry the remains without pomp and 
without price. 

I've seen it done. 




ELIJER GOFF. 




PART II. 




HEN I went home i evenin I fund the house 
full of childern dressd fur enjyment. Fur a 
minit I thote Mariar hed arrived frum Utah with a 
konsinement bequeathd tu her by a munificent Elder. 
I wos on the pint of makin a forrud muvment tu the 
xtreme rear, when the widder stratejikally tuk me in 
the flank and klosed the dore. 

" I've invited a party, Mr. Goff. All these childern 
hev fathurs and mothurs," she sed, purtily tappin her 
little hand on my shoulder as she saw I wos onabul 
tu konceal my surprige at the intelligents ; " and 
all of them will vote fur yu," she added, smilin 
i of her appiest smiles, and lukkin up jyfully intu 
my eyes. 

I stud speechless, so sed nothin. 



ELIJER GOFF. 13 



Whot a masterpiece of a woman ! She tuk my 
umbreller, and helped me off with my kote, and hung 
up my hat, and led me intu the room. 

" This is Mr. Goff, my dears, hum tu romp with 
yu. Mind yu take gud kare of him," sed the widder, 
introdoocin me tu a krowd of little anjels, that klosed 
around me with a shout of delite, and skreamd agen 
in thur sweet innercent jy. 

I wos overkum by the piktur, and so fur forgot my 
intrests as tu wish they wur all mine. Then a thote 
of the hearth stuns I'd seen kum tu me, and a vishun 
of sum women I'd knowd as hed onct been vung 
kum afore me, and I wonderd how much futur sufferin 
wos done up in them small parcels. 

The chilclern klung tu me and larfed, and shoutid, 
and thur wos a regler hurrikane of jy when I kissd 
round the cirkle of cherry lips that seemd intendid fur 
the purpos. 

I very ny mistuk the widder fur a child, she 
lukked so sweet. 

Jest then a tear as I hedn't seen fur forty yeers kum 
intu my eye. I skarcely rekognized it, and kuddent 
stop it ; it fell aiming the golden hair, and I felt as if a 
long fastend up feelin wos bustin out frum my hart. 



14 ELIJER GOFF. 



I seemd tu be tastin summot iit age as I shud hev 
tastid in youth. 

Fur the fust time in my life I hed privet 
reasons fur bleevin I wos a wastid man. 

But then we romped as the widder hed announced, 
and thur wos seryus riotin, and I wos made a perliseman 
of the civil forse, and wos thurfore illtreatid, and wos 
fmelly lockd up in a kubberd tu the satisfakshun of all 
koncernd. Then I bustid out frum my kaptivity and 
kapturd all the rioters, and sentenced 'em tu apples 
and pears and nut krackin, but they only larfed at the 
punishment, and aftur it wos over they begun riotin as 
bad as ever. Then I konverted the kitchin intu a 
reformatory till they begun tu steal the jam and get 
sticky with treakle, and the widder interfered jest as I 
wos assistin in a bad kase of gingerbred larcency. We 
wos all turnd out of the kitchin, and I wos dismist 
frum the forse. 

My disgrace weighd hevy on me. I lay down in a 
korner of the room, and wos mercifully hidden frum 
the vulgar gaze by a table-kloth. Then kontrary tu 
my own opinyuns I wos pronounced ded by a tiny 
little doktur as examined me with a walkin stik. Thur 
wos a gud deal of larfin durin the berrial service, and 



ELIJER GOFF. 1 5 



the korpse very ny kalled sum of 'em tu ordur. At 
larst it wos over, and they erektid a splendid mony- 
ment of furniture over my rottin remains. 

I wos, however, miraklusly restord tu life by a bold 
but simple operashun with a kommon pin. A korpse 
must hev bin ded sum time as kud stand the test. 
It made me rear up in full bloom. 

Then they klimed upon my shoulders, and krawld 
between my legs, and pickd my pockets, and tickled 
me with fethers, and smokd my pipe, and got lost 
in my hat ; and then we playd blind man's buff, 
and puss in the korner, and hide and seek, till I 
fund a man hezn't fizzikle strength enuff tu be a child. 

The widder wos as appy as the childern. She 
playd with 'em in a j en tie way they liked; she told 
'em storys they loved tu hear ; she fed 'em with things 
they hed longed fur ; she nussed 'em when they wur 
tired ; and folded 'em up warm when they went home. 

I never see so many hours of happiness krammd 
intu so short a time. 

That nite when the childern hed gone, and we sot 
alone, the widder sed it wos a pity I hed none of my 
own. as I wos so fond of 'em. 



1 6 ELIJER GOFF. 



I sed it wos, and I felt a bit sad ; but twoz tu late 
tu begin now. 

" All things air possibbul," she said devoutly. 

I lukked at her inkwirin \ but she went on with her 
sewin and sed no more. 

I smokd my pipe in silents, as I lukked back intu 
my life, and fund it hedn't bin whot it mite hev bin; 
and that I hedn't done whot I mite hev done \ and as 
I lukked at the sweet face of the widder bendin karmly 
over her work, I wishd that Utah, and all that it 
kontained, kud be' struk out frum the map. 




ELIJER GOFF. 



n 




PAI 



III. 




HE women stud by me tu a man. 
How troo a woman's instincks air ! I missed 
thur babies, I playd with thur childern, and kissed 
'em ; and with alarmin inakkeracy I told thur hus- 
bands that I envied ; em. Every mothur thurfore sed. 
I wos a fit and proper pusson tu represent 'em in. 
parlyment. 

I addressed a meetin komposed entirely of women. 
They wore yaller ribbons, and brote refreshments ~ 
They seemd pleased tu see me. Sum of thur perlitikle 
remarks indoosd me tu bleeve they'd bin marrid sum 
time. The speeches didn't appear in print, as the 
reporters sed they kudn't hear a word as wos sed in 
konsequence of the babies, and the variety of subjecks 

bein diskussd at the same time by the aujience. 
B 



ELIJER GOFF. 



Kanvassin fur votes wos, however, attended with 
sum danger. Wun nite I wos lukkin fur a konstitoont 
when I suddently fund myself in a entry. Sez I, 
" Elijer, respekted sir: if it gets much darker thur'll 
be no daylite left fur turnorrer; yu'd better turn back 
prevyus tu bein murder d." 

I wos in the act of wheelin round on this timely 
advice, when I kum in kontack with a warm substants, 
as appeerd tu be the main body of a female woman. 
Afore I kud kail assistants a pair of arms wos throwd 
round my neck with grate akkeracy, and I wos 
pashunetly kissed by sum pusson or pussons onknown. 
My presents of mind fur the moment fursook me. It 
wud hev bin a tryin moment fur a member of parly- 
ment. I hedn't time tu xtrikate myself frum the 
orful mistake when — 

" Sammy, my luv ! " sed the plump apparishun, in 
a sweet tone; "I'm so glad yuVe kum. It seems 
yeers sintz we met. 7 ' 

"Sentrys," I murmurd, in low, soothin tones, not 
wishin tukause tu suddent a shok. 

" How stout yuve growd ! " she xklaimed in a 
surpriged vise, as she run her hands round my 
dimenshuns. 



ELIJER GOFF. 1 9 



" It's greef," I sed, with a long sigh, as I tuk hold 
of her hands tu keep 'em frum gettin intu furder 
mischief. 

" Greef ! ' ; she repeated. " Hev yu bin upset ? " 

" Yes/' I sez, " like koles, and freqwent." 

" Poor Sammy !" she murmurd, puttin her cheek 
klose tu mine, and leanin agenst me with natrel 
grace. " Yu wont leave me agen ?" 

"Never!" I ejackerlated, losin myself in the part 
I wos takin, and never thinkin of the fearful effex of 
my spereted utterents. 

"'Then I am yures fur ever!" she xklaimed, with 
alarmin liberality, as she onct more folded me in her 
luvin arms. 

It wos very dark. That's the wust of darkness ; it's 
so easy tu make a mistake. 

At larst I konsiderd it proodent tu brake the spell 
jently ; so I sed, " Luvly maiden, hev yu ever heard of 
Elijer?" 

" Yes," she sez. " He wos a profit." 

"Indeed," I sez. "Wos he in the ile and drug 
line?" 

"Don't be foolish, Sam. It's wicked," sed the 
maiden. 



ELIJER GOFF. 



I stud reproved fur sevrel minits, thinkin whot tu 
say. 

Then I venturd anothur interrogashun, with a voo- 
tu establish my identity. 

" Did he du bizness in Ameriky ? " I whisperd. 

I don't think Samuel kud hev whisperd in the same 
tones as I did. I fund her arms relax thur hold, and 
her cheek lift up frum off my brest, and her hands go 
klean away. Then thur was a rattlin of keys in her 
pocket, and a gratin of summot hard on summot ruff, 
and- the maiden lied struck a lite. 

Tu say as I lukked gilty wud be sayin kompara- 
tively nothin. Tu say as she turnd vilent wud be a 
mere naked ngger of speech. Tu say as I hurrid 
home wud give no adeqwate noshun of the velocity 
of my muvments. I felt like a bird of passige. 
But innercence ken fly as well as gilt. 

When I alited in site of our house I drew up and 
formd myself intu a solum perceshun, and walkd as 
t man. 

The widder sed I lukkd warm. 

" Yes/' I sez. " Kanvassin fur votes '11 open the 
pores as well as anythin I've yet diskoverd." 



ELIJER GOFF. 21 



"Hev yu bin sukcessful?" she asked, with a sweet 
luk as sounded like a reproa ch. 

" Modretly," I answerd. " I've hed a purty gud 
run this evenin." 

"That's rite," she ejakerlated. " Kum and sit 
down. Supper's qwite reddy." 

And I sot down, and forgot all about the prevyus 
akcident, fur the widder's face wos full of smiles, and 
her eyes wur full of lite, and her words wur full of 
hope, and all the darkness seemd tu hev bin left 
outside in the street. 




ELIJER GOFF. 




PART IV. 




OMINASHUN day arrived with a punk-' 
tooality as mite be ekwalld but never 
surparst. Every livin thing seemd tu be on the 
alert. Periitikle maxims flutterd in the breeze, 
and the evans went in a plumper fur bloo. Thur 
wosn't a yaller kloud tu be seen. Natur seemd 
tu be ded agenst us. Bizness subsided intu a blind 
standstill fur sevrel hours. The kloks didn't seem 
tu be intrested in politicks, so went on chuckin 
thur moments away as if thur wud never be any 
end tu 'em. I kan't say how fur thur idears '11 
tally with the aktool fax, not bein in the sekret \ but 
it wos kwite purty tu see 'em goin on in thur pashunt 
perseverin way. i klock '11 never allow hisself tu be 
infloonced by anothur. He goes on strikin out his 



ELIJER GOFF. 



privet opinyuns. It don't matter tu him if he's an 
hour or tu rong ; he sez everythin he's got tu say with 
a desishun as '11 admit of no kontradikshun. 

Kloks air very like politishuns in this respeck. 

At the appinted hour, a yaller karrige drawd up at 
the dore.* The hosses wore yaller harness, and the 
koachman wos, simlerly kaparisond. Thur wos a 
tremenjus krowd of childem kollekted round the 
perlitikle charyut. I kum pomply forth amid the 
cheers of the multitood, and wos instantly whirld off 
frum thur admirin gaze. 

I started frum my peaceful home that mornih with 
a yaller silk handkercher and the best intenshuns, 
On my return the yaller handkercher wos missiih 
The best intenshuns wosn't rekwired, and I wos 
allowd tu bring 'em home. 

When we enterd the hall thur v/os tremenjus shouts, 
groans enuff tu stock a battel field, and pussonel 
remarks of the most revoltin natur. The blessins 
resultin frum freedum of speech wos obvyus. The 
perlisemen kept karryin 'em out. 



* This 'eres kwite a akcidental drop down intu poetry, not beia 
intenshunal. 



24 ELIJER GOFF. 



The inkwiries after my departed mothur wur 
-noomerus tu a fault. They didn't appeer tu realize 
she wos no more. I rekomended sum of 'em tu 
go and make thur inkwiries intu anothur sphere. I 
-wos formally persented with an onooshally hard tater 
under the left year. 

As an artikel of nurishment a tater is vallybul tu 
the human race, but fur xternal applikashun the 
human race is as well without 'em. I konsider 'em 
onsootabul fur perlitikle purposes. 

I wos proposed and sekonded, and the show of dirty 
hands wos in my favor. The speeches wosn't heard, 
but appeerd at full length in the papers, notwith- 
standin the reporters wos upset and very ny boled 
out at the beginnin. 

My speech meshurd about 2 fut 6, and kontained 
- a gud many idears I'd never heard afore. Reporters 
ken sumtimes read a pusson's thotes better than 
he ken hisself. Luk at the parlymentry speeches, 
and then hear 'em. Thurs no komparison between 
'em. It's a pity they aint red out of the noosepapers 
instead of bein red intu 'em. 



ELIJER GOFF. 



25 




PART V. 




T larst the elekshun day set in. The mornin 
bruk in a manner as kuddent be mended, and 
the face of natur bore no trace of prevyus sufTerin. 
The air was barmy, fur the sun wos risin in the yeast* 
It shon more in sorrer than in anger. The sparrers 
twitterd and chatterd as if they'd all got votes, and 
the men with warnuts yelled like skalpers. 

Charyuts kum rollin in with thur frates of luvly 
women and brave men. They wur dressd more or 
less. The kostooms wos varyus — sum hed trowsurs 
with 1 leg, othurs hed legs with 1 trowsur; 
sum wos perfekly armless, sum hed overwelmin 
grate kotes, othurs hed hats as throwd a shadder like 
a U tree. Still all on 'em wos dressd, and wore 



This wos onct an original joak. 



26 ELIJER GOFF. 



ribbons and hevy sticks ; and every i brote his, her,. 
or its vise with 'em fur the publik benefit. 

Thur wos sum as represented big drums, sum as- 
skreamd like fiddles ; vises as kum up frum the bottom 
button of the weskit, and vises as wheezed out frum 
no whur pertikler. Thur wos muzishuns as hed 
perlitikle opinyuns, and muzishuns as hedn't A 
German fioot as kept hisself warm by runnin up 
the roomatic skale, and a German band as deml 
semi shiverd in the mornin air. The drums didn't 
kum out till the battel wos over. 

Yu kan't perswade a big drum. It gives a 
decided opinyun at the start, and it sounds the 
same note at the finish. It's the most biggoted 
instrooment as ever fund its w T ay intu a band. 
I onct resided in i fur a short time. It wos at 
a speritool meetln. i of the sperits nokked me 
on the hed with a gittar. I demanded satisfakshun,. 
and wos instantly akkommodated by anothur sperit as 
akkosted me with grate vilance. I've no furder 
rekollekshun of that nite beyond wakin up in a 
busted drum as stud in i korner of the room. 

Our arrangements wos very komplete. Thur wosn r t 
a lokal prize fiter or a brave barge mariner as hedn't 



ELITER GOFF. 27 



sum perlitikle rnishun. They perfcrmd thur dooty 
with a zeal and simplicity as wos quite touchin, kon- 
sidering they hedn't votes, They kudrrt hev drunk 
more fur the kause if they'd bin blessed with the 
franchise. 

My proud sperit flutterd out of bed with the sun, 
and swooped early intra town. 

I wos well receeved with cheers blended har- 
moniusly with grones, stuns, etsettery. I bleeve bad 
egs air plentiful in these parts. 

A man kan't go intu parlyment with klean hands, 
he hez tu shake so many durty 'uns. 

Jenrally speakin, a gud shake of a frendly hand 
is iizzick I'm parshul tu; it does merrikles, and 
don't interfere with our ordnery funkshuns ; but I'd 
as soon shake hands with the infirmary klok as with 
sum peple. They don't muv in my cirkle — never. 

Wun of my konstitoonts as kuddent be rekognised 
without the aid of sope, treated me like a brothur. He 
lukked black, but he sed he wos yaller tu the bakbone, 
and wos prepared tu go on votin fur me till he kuddent 
see. He'd voted twice alreddy, and when I met him 
he was perceedin tu rekord his perlitikle konvikshuns 
onct more. He sed a gud many on 'em hed bin 



2 8 ELIJER GOFF. 



follerin his example, and, with the aid of a few ded 
'uns, Elijer Goff wud be at the hed of the pole. 

Here he tuk off his hat and shouted " Hip-pip- 
hikkup-hooray." Then he wos silent, and his hed 
lobbed about as if it wos tu loose in the socket. 

He wos thinkin ovur a grevance. " Luk here ! " he 
sez, klosin his eyes and trajerkally holdin out his 
hand, " none o' them bloos wud touch that, and why ?" 
and his hed dropt on tu his dikky. 

"It don't luk temptin," I answerd. 

" It's 'onest," he sed with a bust of indignashun. 

" But it aint klean," I replide. " Hev yu guv sope 
and water a fair trial ? " 

" Yes," he sed doggedly, " I hev. ,, 

" Then try sum openin medsin tu help the pores," 
I sed. " Yu kan't expekt Natur tu wurk it all off 
without assistants." 

"Tu late! tu late!" he mutterd savijly. "They 
hev shund the profferd hand, and now my principuls 
is yaller fur ever." 

"Kobwebs," I sed majesterkally, "stand troo tu yure 
kolours, but don't kram yureself with delooshuns. 
Yu've bin mixin sperits with yure politiks, and they've 
fermented. Sort yure frends, and use plenty of sope. 



ELIJER GOFF. 29 



Don't push yure fist under everybody's nose. Yu ain't 
as big as them as ken guv yu tu in nv?. up fur size, 
nor so gud as them as hev hed twenty veers' start on 
the rite road. Every man hez his fitin wate 3 and every 
woman her reserve bid. Even childern '11 vote 
krukked in front of lollypops." 

"Whot'reyu gointu stand?" he asked, after pawsin 
tu get at the meanin of my remarks. " I : ve jest i 
more vote as is open tu a resonabul offer," and he 
nodded familiarly at my weskit sideways. 

I lukked at him in sorrerful silents. 

Fur a minit he seemed tu forget whur he wos ; then 
suddently remembrin, he seezed my hand, and holdin 
it in both his own, he gurgled, "Elijer, my frend, a pint 
of 'arf-'n-'arf '11 du it. I kan't say no fairer perlitikly," 
and he lost his balance. A perliseman fund it fur him, 
and they went home arm in arm. 

As I stud lukkin at the politishun and the majesty 
of the law pursooin thur zig-zag direkshun in the 
distants, I fund anothur politishun helpin hisself tu 
my watch. I turnd round on him with as quick a 
suddentness as bekum the okkashun, and I sez, "My 
luvly konstitoont, aftur 301 with that sundile. Yure 
out of yure turn," and I ketched him by the skuft of 



30 ELIJER GOFF. 



his koller and shuk him. He appeerd surpriged at his 
mistake, and appealed tu me not tu choke him, as he 
wos a Librel, and hed'nt yet parted with his vote. 

I lukked at him rebookinly at arm's length, and I 
sez, " Hev yu any approximet idear of the alarmin 
konsequences of yure komplaint ? " 

He answerd the questyun by droppin on his gnees. 
He sed he'd a wife and childern dependin on him fur 
support. 

" Yu han't get a honest livin fur 'em by stealin," I sez 
sternly. " Thur's tu much kompetishun in that line, 
pertikly in the retail. Sukcess '11 bring a handkercher 
or a ornament, but failure is folierd by kaptivity, slops, 
stun-krackin, and othur prizin amoozements. It wos 
never intended that a man shud walk about doin 
nothin, warmin his hands in othur peple's pockets." 

He sed he wos very poor. 

" Poor ! " I sez. " A man is never poor when he 
hez helth to work, and a wife tu luv, and childern tu 
klimb ontu his gnees ; nor ken a man be rich if he hez 
neither.'' 

He appeerd tu be a man of mean temperature. 
He sed he wos a orfan. No mothur or fathur hed 
ever suckled him. His mothur, the only wun he ever 



ELIJER GOFF. 



lied, died without seem him. His fathur was 
involvd in konsiderabul obskoority. When qwite an 
infant he wos deposited in the buzzum of ahothur 
family simlerly destitoot with regard tu fathurs, and 
ultimetly handed down tu posterity thru the rnejium 
of a charitabul institooshun. 

I askd him whot his perlitikle opinyuns amounted 
tu in round numbers. 

He sed he wos yailer, and wud vote fur me if I'd 
let him go and stir up tupennorth of jin with 
arf-a-krown. 

I kalled him a mass of bribery and korrupshun, 
and wos perceedin tu make a fu kopyus remarks when 
a perliseman kum tu his assistants. 

When" he stud in the dok he wos sober, and sed it 
wos all thru drink. He seel if the churches hed allis 
bin open like the publik-houses he shud hev bin a 
bettur man. As it wos, he wos marrid and hed a 
family, with no visibui means of livin "without work. 

They lukkd after his intrests far three months. 

Perlitikle dooties quicken thurst more than anythin 
I ever seen. Peple kuddent stand the franchise if the 
publik-houses wos klosed. Yu kuddent get pussons 
tu du all the dirty work if yu didn't give 'em summot 



ELIJER GOFF. 



besides water tu wash in ; and nothin weaker than 
hot sperits wud swill down the perlitikle parts of 
speech on an elekshun day. They're downrite 
klaggy. 

I've herd a gud many dialekts in my time, but the 
perlitikle dialekt squatches all. A politishun's lang- 
widge '11 admit of no cleskripshun, as it don't luk well 
in print : but far givin an idear of the warmth of his 
feelins, I shud say it wud admit of no impruvment this 
side the grave. 

The bonesetters hed a hevy day. They bed tu 
settle a gud many grevances, and tu adjust a gud 
many perlitikle dislokashuns. I've knowd a gud 
many patriots. I'm indoosed tu bleeve patriotism 
begins at home. Party feelin begins anywhur. It 
runs highest aiming them as don't kno whot they're 
fitin fur. Questyuns that shud be settled by the 
brain air jenrally settled by the body, the justis of a 
perlitikle kause bein mostly determind by the 
number of injuries the respektive partis ken stand. 
If it's a diskusshun between kings and queens it's 
konsiderd etyket tu spill the blud and berry the bones 
of thousands ; but if it's between 2 ordnery peple ? 
a fa benehshul drops frum 1 noze, or a black eye, is 



ELIJER GOFF. 33 



konsiderd an ample apolojy, and at onct decides 
who's rite. 

Thur wos a gud many argyments of that sort durin 
the day. Sum of 'em kum under my immejut notis. 
1 man objekted tu a broken hed, on the rediklus 
ground that he didn't like it. His only kumfurt 
appeerd tu be that he'd korrected a few errors on the 
othur side. Anothur konsiderd that his frunt teeth 
hed sumthin tu du with the gud of his kuntry, and 
he seemd sorry he'd lost 'em ; and a kole-heaver went 
so fur as tu xpress his determinashun tu endure 
everlastin kombustshun if he didn't avenge an 
indignity as hed kum tu him in the form of a bloo 
swellin under the left eye. 

Thur wos a gud deal of natrel perlitenes amung 'em. 
I see 1 man hit anothur an invitashun tu sit down, 
which he did. He got up and let out a simler kompli- 
ment frum the rite shoulder. They wos both very 
much siled, and parted in a frendly way, kallin i 
anothur by thur unkrystyun names. 

But peple seemd stun blind tu my intrests. I lent 
myself fur perlitikle purposes, and wos returnd tu my 
frends by a overwhelmin minority. My principul 
supporters wos sevrel times upset by the noose of our 



34 ELIJER GOFF. 



triumfant defeat, and tords bed time thur disappint- 
ment got the better of 'em. Sum of the workin 
klasses fair totterd under thur load, and wos evidently 
staggerd by the state of the pole. I met with a gud 
deal of kindness frum sum of 'em. i man kordially 
shuk me by the hair. I bleeve they tuk him tu the 
infirmry. It wos understud he hed met with a akcident, 
and hed a rush of blud tu the noze. 

When it wos knowd that I wos outnumberd, and 
that the bloos hed karrid thur viktim in triumf, I 
stud out on the balkony tu address the krowd. 

Tu say as I wos warmly receeved wudn't du justis 
tu the aktool fax. Thur's no word in the English 
langwidge as kud. 

When yu introdoos stuns and sticks intu any 
langwidge it bekums more forcibul. Even rotten 
eggs '11 impart sum addishunal beauty. 

I lukked down the throtes of the thousands as 
turnd up thur faces with open mouths and glarin 
eyes, as if I wos gud tu eat, and wos about tu be 
distribooted among 'em. 'Twud hev bin a dredful 
moment fur a erly . Kristyun. I tried tu chuck a fu 
words intu 'em to be goin on with, but they refoozed 
'em, and howled and hooted like zoologikles at feedin 



ELIJER GOFF. 35 



time. Then all at onct thur kum on a hevy shower 
of rain, stuns, eggs, hail, warnuts, and the wust froots 
of the erth. I never see the elements so noomerus, 
Fur a fu minits we wos obliged tu get under kover. 
Umbrellas mite du in times of peace, but on an 
elekshun day they air nowhur. 

When the storm hed sumwot subsided, wun of 
my frends handed me a speakin trumpet, and I 
thanked 'em thru that fur the honor I'd done 'em 
that day. As I'd nothin tu lose, I blowd 'em up thru 
the trumpet fur tryin tu imitate wild beests in vise 
and manner as they hed bin doin, and fur sayin a gud 
many things as a wild beest wudn't sile his mouth 
with. " But yu kan't humbug Natur," I sez. " If 
yu abooze the present the futur '11 be down on yu 
afore yu kno whur yu air. Thur's a fixed proporshun 
fur penalties, and yu kan't get off by payin o pence 
in the pound. I've nevur knowd natrel retribooshun 
miss fire. Sum of yu don't kno this, and konduct 
yureselves like ostriches. When yu've done summot 
rong, yu stick yure heds in a hole and think yu're 
out of site ; but you'll soon wish yure kote-tales wos 
longur and strongur, fur Natur kicks ard. Thur's 
no kases of mistaken identity in stummick akes.- 



$6 ELIJER GOFF. 



Sum of yure fathers walked 8 miles tu work of a 
mornin, and 8 miles back tu bed, aftur 12 hours of 
hot sunshine on thur bent baks, and eat and drunk 
and karrid red cheeks, and sed thur prayers far ny a 
hunderd yeers, and then died ard, blessin a krowd 
of sorrerin grate-grandchildern. Yiill nevur see yure 
•childern's childern. Yu shorten yure hours of labor 
and yure hours of life. Yu're more dissatisfide with 
more wages than they wur with less. Yu're up latur 
in the mornin, and up latur at nite. Yu burn tu 
much gas." 

Jest then a egg as hed a narrer eskape of bein a 
warbler flu intu the trumpet, and stopped my speech ; 
and snothur storm kum on hevyur than evur, and 
±>ruk all the winders. My frends pulled me in by the 
kote-tales, and kondukted me home stratejikally thru 
the bak dore, while the perlitikle tempest wos thun- 
xlerin in at the front. 



ELIJER GOFF. 



37 




PART VI. 




HE follerin Sunday arternoon, as I wos 
stumblin amung the graves whur I wos 
born, I met with the lamented bones of a ancestur. 
Thur wos a heap of 'em lyin under a broken stun, as 
hed a broken inskripshun. * * "neezur GorT" wos 
mercifully left on wun 3 kornerd fragment. On 
anothur irreglar piece of the same stun wos the solum 
words, " 7 wives." 

I stud uprite in admirashun. 

" That wos a man, if yu like ! " sez the old parish 
grave skooper, hobblin up and turnin over a bone 
with his stik. " / berrid him." 

" How is it as he's workd his way to the surfice ?" 
I inkwired. 



38 ELIJER GOFF. 



" Workd his way tu the surfice," he repeated with 
evident impashunts. " Why it's a wunder he hezn't 
workd his way klean out, and jined hisself tugether 
agen, and walkd off. Thur's no less nor 7 wives 
under Aim" he added, as if he was tryin tu konvince 
hisself as well as me. " I knowd he'd never keep 
down amung 'em." 

" He must hev bin parshul tu wives," I sez. 

" Parshul," he sez ; " twoz his hobby. He wos ded 
on 'em ; and so he is now," he added, chucklin over 
the solum joak. 

" Irreverend sir," I sez, addressin the anshunt 
dignitary of the church, " I've privet resons fur 
bleevin them bones blong tu me." 

"Blongtu yu?" he sed, inkredulus, with surprige. 
" How many sets of bones du yu reqwire in this 
wurld?" 

" I bleeve furder," I sez, not noticin his questyun, 
" that these bones wos orijinally a unkle of mine, and 
that when in the flesh they walkd about in the 
kapacity of my father's brother." 

" What name hev yu bin nurished under ? " he 
askd, plantin his stick in the ground in a attitood of 
interrogashun. 



ELIJER GOFF. 39 



" Elijer GofFs my image and superskripshun," I 
sez, with bekomin pride, "and long may it keep 
klear of a tomb stun." 

" Amen ! " he ejakerlated, frum the mere forse of 
habit ; then suddently seizin hold of my hand he sed 
exultinly, " I'm proud tu say I berrid yure fathur, and 

I berrid yure mothur ; and in fak I berrid the 

whole bilin." 

" Praps yu'd like tu berry me?" I sez, thinkin it as 
well tu pass the kompliment. He sed he'd knowd 
more onliklier things, and hoped as he mite be spared 
tu perform the sad office. 

I told him thur wos no immejut hurry. He sed, 
" No, thur wosrit no hurry," in a quiet pashunt way, 
as led me tu konklood he wos gud fur anothur 
sentry. 

On his rekkomendashun we went intu his old 
ancestrul kottage, and smokd a pipe tugethur. He 
knowd the histry of the noomerus Goffs frum the 
preface tu the printer's name. They appeer tu hev 
bin much given tu marryin, and as fur as possibul 
strongly opposd tu dyin. They didn't advokate 
temprance, but tuk kindly tu superstishun, bleevin 
that a surplis allis kovers a gud man, and that Britons 



40 ELIJER GOFF. 



never will be slaves. Between 'em they managed a 
kristnin almost monthly, and wos never knowd tu 
get tired of biled turkey and jin. Sum of 'em seemd 
tu think they kud get on without the Ten Kommand- 
ments, and lukked upon laws as onnecessary luxuries. 
A fu on 'em went so fur as tu luk forrud hopefully tu 
a thousand yeers of peace. 

The worms seemd tu relish them jest the same as if 
they'd bin pussons with a moderet taste. 

Old Ebneezur (now bones) wos a man of enormus 
affeckshuns. He led seven blushin brides tu the 
altur afore natur konsiderd he'd made suffishent atone- 
ment fur bustin intu life. 

In spite of all these blessins he died ard. 

I wos sorry fur him, and at onct put him down fur 
a new tombstun. The old grave skooper sed he'd 
see it wos propurly done. I left the inskripshun tu him, 
as he'd more xperients in skriptural histories, and 
understud the subjeck thru. 

When that tombstun wos fmishd it bore the 
follerin 



ELIJER GOFF. 



41 



EPITAFF. 



Born in Hope. Died in the Workhus. 

(bein qwite ripe.) 

He wos a honest man and a noomerus father. 

He hed 7 wives, and wos respekted by all as 
knu him. 

He wos mortally wounded at Bunker's Hill, 

And aftur lingerin in the enjyment of gud helth 
fur ny 50 years 

HE DIED, 

And lies here 

DED. 

He wos well known at all charitabul institooshuns, 
till deth guv him permnent relief. 

As a parish konstabul, krier, and klark, he onct stud 
onrivaled ; 

And bein freqwently marrid, his virtu remaned 
unshaken tu the end. 



42 



ELIJER GOFF. 




PART VII. 




HED finishd T, and hed lit my pipe, wun 
blusterin evenin, aftur a busy day, and 
wos sittin with my feet on the fender, talkin tu the 
widder, when thur kum a feeble nok at the frunt 
dore as indoosd the widder tu exklame, " I wonder 
w r ho that ken be ? " 

6t Nobody with any kontribooshuns fur my poor's 
box, I'll be bound," I sez, goin on with my pipe. 

The widder went tu open the dore, and in a fu 
minits returnd, bearin in her arms a brown parcel, 
and in her hand a note. 

u A little boy brote these fur yu," she sed, handin 
'em tu me j entry, and lukkin very kuryus and purty as 
I purceeded tu open 'em. 

The letter not bein' a bloo 'un lukked innercent 
enufF, but the parcel hed a misteryus and furbiddin 



ELIJER GOFF. 43 



appeerunts. I opend the letter fust. It red as 
follers : — 

" Dear Lijer, — 

"I've jest kum intu onxpekted posseshun of 

sum rubbige. It's no use tu me, not bein litrery. I 

thurfore send yu a bundel of it. Yu ken make whot 

use yu like on it, as the man as rote it's ded. He 

died in the sylum. They sed he wos a promisin 

yung man. He promisd tu pay me, but never did. 

I hed tu seeze his bits o' things, tho I didn't want tu ; 

but he sed if / didn't sumbody eltz wud ; so I seezd 

'em. I wos a bit sorry fur him, but a landlud kan't 

afford many feelins fur individool kases. He hez 

tu spred 'em ovur so many. Rent days air very 

exhostin in this respek, 

" Yures stedfustly, 

" Silas Jerrybim. 

" P.S. — How is it as yu hevn't bin tu service at the 
Bore and Pigskin lately ? I hope yu hevn't lost all 
appetite fur thurst." 

" It's kind of Jerrybim tu send me rubbige," I sez, 
turnin ovur the parcel tu find the gnot ; " but let's see 



44 ELIJER GOFF. 



whot the sed rubbige is kompozed of. Jerrybim isn't 
a vagabone as a rool." 

We opend the parcel, and fund the rubbige in 8 
small packets of paper, named, and dated, and sealed. 

" It'll take me a sentry of Sabbath days to read al* 
on 'em," I sez. " Whot on erth and oshun ken they 
be about? Sum on it luks like poetry," I added, 
lukkin down intu i of the smallest packets, and 
purceedin tu open it. 

" Shall I read them tu yu, Mr. GofF, while yu go 
on with yure pipe 1 ?" askd the widder, eagerly. "I'm 
fond of readin." 

"Air yu?" I sez, in a artful tone of surprige. 
" Certinly yu may. I kud sit down and listen tu yu 
fur the remainder of my natrel life," and I handed 
ovur the packets, and settled down intu a pozishun of 
komfortabul attenshun, and smoked. 

Whot a evanly posseshun is a brite and appy 
woman. Evanly even in the purpel distants. 

The widder wos as pleased as if I'd done her a 
kindness. She put away her work, drew her chair 
up tu the fire, and guv a playful little koff. Then 
takin up the packets and arrangin them beside her, 
perceeded tu read 'em as they wos numberd. 

The fust wos No. i, and red as follers : — 



ELIJER GOFF. 45 




y 



OLALEA. 




LL down among the lilies by the old brook's 
rugged side, 
Where the long grass fondly droops to kiss 
the wave, 
Where blossoms, sweet and fair, with their incense 

fill the air, 
And new beauty springs again from Beauty's grave : 

'Twas here among the lilies in the green and silent 

glade, 
Where the birds have sung their sweetest songs of joy, 
Beneath this old yew tree, ere I met with Lolalea, 
That I dreamed in happy moments when a boy. 

Time fled, and other lilies came, and faded with the 

years, 
And my childhood glided from me like a dream ; 
Then my loving Lolalea, like an angel came to me, 
And we gave sweet vows of love beside the stream. 



46 ELIJER GOFF. 



And O ! among the lilies, as the years flew quickly- 
past, 
Fair young faces like my Lolalea's came by, 
And in every cherub face, her own I loved to trace, 
For I loved her with a love that could not die. 



Once more among the lilies that are fading by the 

brook, 
I sit dreaming 'neath the yew tree as of yore, 
But dreams of joy have fled, for sweet Lolaleais dead, 
And the music of her voice will come no more. 

Ah ! bloom again, ye lilies, and flow on, sweet sobbing 

stream, 
Sing here once again, ye birds, your song to me, 
But warble not with joy, as I heard ye when a boy, 
For ye're singing o'er the grave of Lolalea. 



The widder laid down the paper and put her 
handkercher tu her eyes. The vusses hed made her 
sad. 

" Don't let 'em upset yu," I sez, gulpin down my 
own feelins. " It's only his fun. He didn't mean it. 



ELIJER GOFF. 47 



Thur's no real poetry rote now a days"; it's all 
adulturated with money making I added, thinkin 
tu konvince her furder. 

" But he must hev dearly luv'd Lolalea," she sed, 
lukkin at me thru 2 big tears. 

" It don't allis foller," I replide. " Luv's very much 
like everythin eltz as don't resemble it ; them as talks 
the most does the least." 

" But luk at the paper," she sed, handin it tu me ; 
" it's bin blotted with his tears." 

" Its jest as likely tu hev bin blotted with jin and 
water," I sez, rememburin sevrel poets I hed met in 
times parst as hed divided thur idears with sperits. 

" Oh, no ! He kuddent hev bin a bad man to rite 
so tendurly of his ded luv," she sez, lukkin at me as 
if implorin me not tu disturb her bleef in his gudness, 

It wud be a blessed thing if all men wur whot 
innercent women bleeve 'em tu be. 

But they ain't. 

I returnd the widder's luk with a sigh, and handed 
her packet No. 2. It wos hedded, "My First 
Vapour Bath," and appeerd tu hev bin rote sum 
time. 



4 8 



ELIJER GOFF. 




My First Vapour Bath. 




Y doctor is a despot. He presides over a 
court beyond which there is no appeal. I 
should as soon think of declining to fall in with the 
views of her Majesty's Government on a question of 
income-tax as I should think of disobeying one of his 
mandates. He does not impose a term of imprison- 
ment with the option of a fine, but he suspends my 
freedom and substitutes physic for food. He does 
not define my case as one requiring a retributive " five 
bob or a week;" but he throws my stomach into a 
state of anarchy, and smiles blandly at the agonising 
process. He covers scraps of paper with unintelligible 
hieroglyphics, and bids me confidingly swallow what 
he has thereon mysteriously specified, and submis- 



ELIJER GOFF. 49 



lively carry out what he has thereon illegibly com- 
manded. If I, in my feeble state of physical 
prostration, suggest a more merciful treatment, he 
opens the door and sorrowfully wishes me good-bye, 
as if I was about to step into the grave and be no 
more seen. 

One day rheumatism got hold of me, and I sought 
his aid. " Take a vapour bath and rub that in," he 
said in an indifferent, off-hand way, as he handed me 
the prescription he had prepared. 

" A vapour bath," I faltered timidly, in a voice 
husky with anxiety and broken with horrible rheumatic 
twistings. " Will not a warm bath do as well, 
doctor?" 

" Decidedly not," he replied in cold, cruel, remorse- 
less tones. " You must have the vapour bath at once ; 
and I will see you again in two days. Good morning." 

The last words were said more cheerfully, and were 
accompanied by a warm, reassuring pressure of the 
hand. I glided out into the sunshine. 

There was no grave outside the doorstep, as I 

almost feared ; but I had a kind of presentiment that 

I was walking towards one, and I felt convinced, too, 

that any violation of the illegible statutes on the 
D 



50 ELIJER GOFF. 



paper in my hand would be followed by disastrous 
consequences. 

I had never experienced the pleasures, or the pains, 
of a vapour bath, and knew nothing of the process. 
I had heard them spoken of as being invaluable in 
some kinds of disease, and I had read in certain 
advertisements that, for the insignificant sum of 
eighteenpence, a person might be operated on by 
steam to any extent. There my knowledge began 
and there it ended. As to the mode of administering 
the vapour I knew nothing. If the attendant had 
taken off my clothes, and had suspended me over the 
steam of a boiling tea-kettle, I have not the slightest 
hesitation in affirming that I should have had entire 
confidence in the efficacy of the system, and should have 
submitted with the conviction that it was operating 
beneficially. If he had bidden me sit on a saucepan 
of boiling water, and had beguiled me with an 
old newspaper, I should have meekly complied with 
his instructions, and have remained faithfully at my 
post until ordered off. Still I believed, as I left the 
chemist's shop (in which I had deposited the 
hieroglyphics) with the bottle of liniment in my 
pocket, and groaned myself into a cab, that I was 



ELIJER GOFF. 5 I 



being hurried off to a very different and far more 
trying ordeal. 

I began to anticipate the process. 

In my simplicity I imagined myself in a room, thick 
and hot with steam, sitting dejectedly in a corner, and 
simmering down to a required state of skin and bone. 
And I thought, too, that in that same chamber of hot 
vapour there were other victims also, sitting sad and 
motionless as myself, and looking very dim through 
the thick haze, patiently awaiting the dissolving of 
their bodies and the ultimate bleaching of their bones • 
for it seemed to me that subsequently the bones 
would manifest themselves in a remonstrative way. 
Then, with livid cheeks, I contemplated the return 
home of cadaverous faces and weak legs to the 
sorrowing friends who anxiously awaited such portions 
of our substance as we might be prudent, or fortunate, 
enough to retain. And I tremblingly wondered what 
Mrs. Simpson would say when she saw my sunken 
cheeks and collapsed form return to its post at the 
head of the table; and also what the chubby and 
cherry-cheeked little Simpsons would think when they 
saw, with their young impatient eyes, my feeble 
attempts to carve the Sunday joint, and witnessed my 



52 ELIJER GOFF. 



abortive endeavours to look paternally substantial and 
dignified. I remembered that John Ruskin had said 
something about age losing its honour and youth its 
reverence, and I became concerned lest the reverential 
feeling should depart from the bosoms of the youthful 
Simpsons when they realised the dreadful reduction 
that had taken place in the person of their sire. 

I was beginning to tremble with anxiety. 

The desirability of turning back presented itself to me 
with irresistible force as the cab drew up in front of the 
establishment that contained my imaginary chambers 
of horrors. I glanced helplessly at the painted sign 
that suggested various modes of refined torture. There 
was the Russian suffocating method, the Turkish sim- 
mering process, and the melting down in hot vapours. 
There were hot miseries and cold miseries ; saline 
unpleasantries, partial wettings and complete sop- 
pings ; the whole, or part, to be obtained on terms 
that placed them within the reach of the multitude. 
But the multitude seemed to wag their heads deri- 
sively and pass on. They were not to be turned 
aside by the temptations priced upon that board. 
Some among the stream of homeward-bound looked 
averse to water, and hurried on. Others looked as if 



ELIJER GOFF. 53 



they never had indulged in the luxury of ablution? 
but had lived, and sighed, and fulfilled their destiny 
so far in a state of grime. Even they passed on. 

Slowly J crept from the cab, every movement being 
pregnant with agony, and passed onward through 
the yawning portals to meet my uncertain fate. As I 
entered, a gong sounded through the dreary passages,, 
and a head protruded through a pigeon hole on the 
right I addressed myself to it in an imploring sort of 
way, and intimated my wish to be carefully steamed. 
" Eighteenpence " was the unfeeling reply that came 
through the pigeon hole in company with a ticket for 
my guidance. " John ! vapour bath," shouted that 
same cold voice, and cold echoes repeated them up 
the empty corridors ; and on the stairs stood John, 
sternly beckoning me to follow him. 

He was a man on whom forty summer suns 
had shone without any very decided success. They 
had not made him beautiful, nor had they 
developed him very cruelly. His appearance was 
singularly impartial — neither for him nor against 
him ; but there was on his face an expression 
of unalterable sadness, like to the sadness of one 
whose path had been over battle-fields, or among 



54 ELIJER GOFF. 



shallow graves, where protruding bones seem like 
skeleton fingers pointing out new victims to Death. 

I slowly ascended the stairs, and followed the sad 
figure in the shirt-sleeves. Each step added to my 
pain, and each moment to my anxiety. My nerves 
were collectively performing their functions, irrespec- 
tive of my personal comfort, and my confidence in 
their great usefulness became seriously shaken. Still 
in a feeble excelsior style I continued the ascent, and 
having gained the first landing, I proceeded with an 
andante movement towards an open door through 
which John's coatless form had disappeared. 

I believe at this moment my feelings were of a 
purely selfish character. Mrs. Simpson and the youth- 
ful results of our union were forgotten ; domestic ties 
snapped like fiddle-strings; and in my world just then 
there were but two people — John and myself. 

The room into which the sad spirit beguiled me 
was small and uncomfortably wooden in its general 
effect. There was a bath lying down in one corner 
and a cupboard standing up in another ; behind the 
door there was a large square corn-bin kind of struc- 
ture of unpainted wood, and near the window a small 
dressing-table, supporting a toilet-glass of miserably 



ELIJER GOFF. 55 



meagre proportions. One square yard of unsaleable 
carpet lay stretched upon the floor, and one cane- 
bottomed chair, that had the appearance of having 
been sat upon, leaned against the wall in an ap- 
parently exhausted state. Over all there was a green 
light coming in a weak, melancholy flood through the 
Venetian blinds, which melancholy light gave a de- 
composing appearance to John's unhappy features, 
and imparted quite a sepulchral glimmer to the scene. 
The door being closed I proceeded in great pain 
to hang up my hat and to remove my clothes, with 
an instinctive knowledge that a condition of nudity 
would be imposed before the process began. John 
stood passively behind me, coldly examining (as I 
thought) my boiling qualities, and calculating, with 
cruel indifference, the number of pounds avoirdupois 
that would be missing from the Simpson estate on 
my return home. At last he was aroused from his 
attitude of contemplation by the removal of my last 
stocking, and at once proceeded to the corn-bin. I 
noticed as he raised the lid that it was pierced with a 
large hole, on the probable use of which I for a 
moment speculated ; but it was only for a moment, 
for my attention was directed to the front of the 



S^ ELIJER GOFF. 



structure, that all at once opened in the manner of 
folding doors, revealing to my astonished gaze the 
inside arrangements. There was certainly nothing 
suggestive of comfort or ease within those bare 
boards. A piece of wood laid cross-wise, with a 
towel spread over it, seemed to represent a seat, but 
it looked very uninviting to a man whose skin formed 
his only protection. By this time, however, I had 
become resigned to any fate that could await me ; 
and when John requested me by a silent gesture to 
seat myself within that timbered sarcophagus, I did 
so with the air of a martyr who looks upon death as 
the gate of life. 

I had hardly time to adjust myself in the position 
of a heathen god, when the front doors of the bin 
closed before me, and the upper lid descended over- 
whelmingly upon me. I shut my eyes at the sudden 
probability of a final crack on the head, but the next 
moment, finding myself unharmed, I looked around. 
My body had disappeared, but my head was pro- 
truding through the hole that I had innocently 
supposed was intended for another purpose. I felt as 
if I was illustrating a Chinese method of inflicting 
corporal punishment. 



ELIJER GOFF. 57 



In order the more completely to separate the mind 
from the matter of the Simpson representative, the 
sad spirit in shirt sleeves had wrapped a towel round 
my neck, so that my head had the appearance of 
being served up like a boar's head at some civic feast. 

John had now resumed his attitude of contempla- 
tion directly in my front. We were both silent. 
Within the bin, that now contained my mortal 
remains, there had set in an alarming hissing, such 
as might proceed from a nest of infuriated snakes, 
or a bursted steam-pipe, and with it a sensation 
of humid heat such as I used to think Professor 
Anderson's pigeons experienced ere they came so 
unexpectedly out of the cauldron. For a few minutes 
I sat perfectly still, gazing inquiringly into John's 
soulless eyes, as a captive would gaze at his jailor 
through the dish-hole in the prison door. A more 
unresponsive pair of eyes I never saw. 

There was no comfort in them. It seemed as if 
tortures and fears like mine were of daily occurrence 
with him ; and so without sympathy and without hope 
I sat and simmered, and felt, as the heat increased, 
that my substance was trickling from a million pores. 
I don't think it would be possible to feel more defence- 



58 ELIJER GOFF. 



less than I felt then in my utter nakedness. I faltered 
out a remark pregnant with anxiety, but it brought 
forth no response from the sad, imperturbable figure 
in shirt sleeves. The unresponsive eyes turned coldly 
towards me, gave me one calm, passionless look, and 
then turned away. Then a long pause again, while 
the hissing proceeded in the neighbourhood of my 
unprotected legs, the foot-plate every minute growing 
hotter, till at length it became unendurable, and I had 
to lift my feet and keep them suspended in the hot air. 
My attitude at that time was, I think, the most 
undignified it would be possible for a man to assume, 
but fortunately the box concealed all but my head, 
and kept the outer world in ignorance of the 
resemblance I bore to some of the freaks of nature I 
have seen preserved in spirits. Still I believed even 
then that for the entire absence of dignity I was 
compensated by an entire cessation of pain. I began 
to speculate in my mind whether after all evaporation 
was not an easy method of releasing the soul from 
its tenement of clay. True the surviving represen- 
tatives of the defunct Simpson would be puzzled 
where to erect the headstone, and where to place 
their flowers on the future anniversaries of this 



ELIJER GOFF. 59 



melancholy day. True the neighbours would be 
disappointed when they saw no emaciated mutes 
and no panoply of woe, no richly-plumed hearse, no 
prancing steeds, no coffin, and no crowd. It seemed 
almost like an injustice to them; but here the thought 
itself evaporated, for John aroused himself from his 
reverie, and advanced as if about to remove my head 
on to a dish. I felt that something that would 
seriously affect the Simpsons was about to take place ; 
but he merely applied his thumbs to the swollen veins 
on my temples, and then turned away without a word, 
as if he was satisfied I was not done. This time he 
left the room slowly, as a man with a solemn but 
settled purpose. It struck me as my eyes followed 
him to the door that there was an expression on his 
face, a wearied expression, as if he was tired of death- 
scenes, and was the unwilling medium of some 
impending act of retribution. I awaited his return 
with an anxiety I am sure my face betrayed ; for 
when, after what appeared to me a long absence, he 
returned, he looked at me with a glance more rapid 
than usual, and exclaimed in tones I shall never 
forget, li You've had enough.' 1 

From that moment 1 have looked upon John as a 



6o ELIJER GOFF. 



man addicted to speaking the truth. From that 
moment I have looked upon him as a reliable 
authority on the question of quantum stiff. Yet, after 
all, to say that I had had enough was giving but a 
feeble and insufficient idea Of the fulness of my satis- 
faction. To say that I was grateful to him for his 
keen perception of the case as it stood would be but 
expressing the truth in the minimum. I cannot con- 
ceive the feeling of gratitude being carried to a further 
point, for although my sensations had been perfectly 
painless, yet owing to the weakness induced by 
twelve months of ill health, and the nervous misery 
that had come with the light of three hundred and 
sixty-five days, and the horrible fancies and disturb- 
ing dreams that had come with the darkness of each 
night, I felt unable to endure the enervating effects 
of the simmering I had been undergoing ; and when 
the emotionless face and the mechanical hands came 
to the bin-side for the purpose of releasing me 
from my seething captivity, I felt a renewal of 
hope that was as delightful as it was unexpected. 
The towel was removed from my neck, the lid 
was lifted, the doors opened, and, oh, joy ! I saw 
through the steam that my body was not all bone ; 



ELIJER GOFF. 6 I 



in fact, my appearance, though extremely pitiable, 
was positively reassuring. Through all the melting 
down I had experienced I still retained a fair propor- 
tion, such as, with the aid of a skilful tailor, might 
be palmed off upon the world as a manly form. But 
it was a somewhat timid hope that had come back to 
me, for as I sat there linenless and unmoved, steaming 
like an old coacher of the summer days gone by, I 
wondered if there were other ignominious tortures to 
follow, and whether John's mysterious movements 
were for or against. I watched him anxiously as he 
placed some towels temptingly before my eyes, and 
I almost deluded myself into the delicious suppo- 
sition that I had passed through my troubles and 
still lived. But there was nothing but cold justice 
in John's eye, as he beckoned me forth from the 
bin. I felt it would be a waste of innocent feelings 
to expect mercy from him ; so I followed as he 
directed. I saw the tall cupboard in the corner 
opened, and I have a dim recollection of hearing a 
sepulchral voice say, " Go in." 

I have found by subsequent investigation that there 
is no lettering over the doors of that tall cupboard, 
but I could have sworn that at that moment I saw- 
there the words, " Pray for Simpson's soul." 



62 ELIJER GOFF. 



I was struck by the absence of any special appeal 
for Simpson's body, which, from my narrow view of 
the question, seemed to be not without its claim for 
prayerful regard. I felt that John's behaviour placed 
him beyond the reach of my forgiveness, and I resisted 
a foolish impulse to wish him good-bye. 

I could never understand how it is that a dying man 
should care to have another look round at the few trifling 
objects that lie about him in this world when he knows 
that he is on the point of entering another; but we 
see it on the scaffold and we see it at the stake, and 
as I entered the tall cupboard I knew the sensation 
myself. I looked round the wooden room, at the 
coffin-like bath, at the leaden man with a green 
light resting on one side of his face and a deep 
neutral shade on the other, then took another step 
forward and found myself boarded in on every side. 
But the outer world was not quite excluded from the 
cupboard. There was an opening that admitted light, 
and commanded an unnecessarily excellent view of 
the green and grey features of the solemn attendant. 
The opening also admitted sound, for I heard the 
voice that had bidden me go in now bid me hold 
back my head. I was more docile than the lamb that 



ELIJER GOFF. 6$ 



is led to the slaughter, and I obeyed the sepulchral 
voice. As I did so I looked upj but seeing nothing 
but darkness I prepared for the worst, and closed my 
eyes. Ten thousand thunders ! there came upon 
me that instant a splash and a shock that made me 
leap up into the darkness with a broken gasp, and 
contracted muscles, and a faint cry that ended in a 
gurgle j and the torrent came upon me as I gurgled, 
and I writhed and twisted, and put my hands up to 
my face and gave myself up for lost. But the torrent 
suddenly ceased, the doors of the cupboard suddenly 
opened, and when I had squeezed the water from my 
eyes I beheld the motionless form and the pitiless face 
of John. Had it not been that his severity had made 
him so distasteful to me, I should have rushed into 
his arms and clung to him, for I felt that unless some- 
body intervened between me and my destiny the odds 
would be considerably in favour of destiny, and the 
little Simpsons would be sireless. 

From that moment, though John's features under- 
went no change his manner did. Incredible as it may 
seem, and as it did seem to me, he became positively 
kind. He took a bath sheet and placed it around 
me, and rubbed me, and gave me a warm towel, and 



64 EL1JER GOFF. 



put the place in order, and before I could thank him 
he passed silently away. 

Left to myself, I rubbed my bodily remains 
dry, and then applied the liniment, and rubbed 
that dry too, and then dressed, for even if there 
had been other tortures I should have declined 
them. Long before I had finished I felt a different 
man. My rheumatic pains had departed, and they 
did not return. There was a newness of feeling and 
a sense of purification that were very enjoyable. I 
felt rewarded for the unnatural treatment I had 
received, and in my heart I unreservedly forgave 
John. 

I was grateful to find that on my return home there 
were no perceptible portions of my body missing. 
Mrs. Simpson said I looked clearer about the skin 
and brighter about the eye, though she pronounced 
me damp about the hair, and, if possible, a bigger 
goose than ever; but, as she always accompanies 
her uncomplimentary remarks with a kiss, I like them ; 
and although she makes uncomplimentary remarks 
very often I do not get tired of them. When I told 
her the history of my first vapour bath, as I have told 
it here, I saw from certain gleams in her eye that she 



ELIJER GOFF. 65 



would have asked John some terrible questions if he 
had done as I feared he was doing ; for although ten 
years have passed since first I called her wife, and 
although nine little troubles have come upon us with 
their great pleasures, still our hearts beat together in 
unison as they did in the twilights long ago. Our 
hopes and dreams are undivided as they were then, 
and whenever the spirit of decay steps between us 
with his scythe, as he will one day do, there will be 
an emptiness in the life that is left behind, and a grief 
in the heart that lives, that can neither be told by 
hot tears nor be lettered upon cold tombs. 



The widder wos amoozed at Simpson's trubbles, 
and larfed as she red 'em; but she put down the 
packet without a smile, fur the larst fu lines stole intu 
her hart, and softened her luk. 

" It's all in the same handritin," she sed, thotefully, 

"but it don't sound the same as the poem, except the 

little bit at the end. He must hev bin a strange 

mixture," she added, lukkin intu my face fur a 

korroberatin luk.' 
E 



66 ELIJER GOFF. 



" Yes," I sez, " men air strange mixtures. I've 
knowd sum as yu kud pull intu pieces, but yu 
kuddent pull a groan out frum 'em. Them same men 
hev kried quarts at the deth cf summot they luvd." 

" I kan't endure seein a man weep," sed the widder, 
mournfully. 

" It means a gud deal if he's a real man," I sez ; ,r a 
woman's greef kums out with her tears, but a man's 
life kums out with his. Women kry tu often tu du 
thur selves any vilent harm. It takes a gud strain tu 
bust a hart." 

" Hulloa," I sez, takin up the next packet, " here's 
more vusses. Let's get our handkerchers reddy." 

The packet wos labeld, " Echoes," and, like the 
other, wos dated 1866. 




ELIJER GOFF. 



6 7 



^^: 




C H O E S 




ING that sad song again, for it brings back to 



me 



The memory of hours passed away ; 
It comes like the echo of music I heard, 
When the young heart was glad, and the life page 
unblurred 
By the tears of an after day. 



'Tis the song which she sang in the still eventide 

As we stood 'neath the starlit sky ; 
And it seems when 'tis ended again I should see 
The tear in her eye, and the smile she gave me, 

In sweet hours of rapture gone by. 



O ! the heart that I loved has been hushed into sleep 7 

And the voice that was sweetest is gone ; 
And the stars seem to mourn, as the night winds terl 
The message they bring from a far away bell, 
That for ever seems tolling on. 



68 ELIJER GOFF. 



Yet that sad plaintive song, like an echo of joy 

Borne back o'er the dull lapse of years, 
Brings a dream of the past, that the heart loves well, 
Though 'tis mingled with sorrow the tongue cannot 
tell, 
Or eyes weep away with their tears. 



The widder's vise trembled as she red these vusses, 
and she put J em aside without a word. I wos busy 
koffin, fur the poetry ketched sum bakky smoke in my 
swaller, and ny choked me. 

The widder's eyes wos beginnin tu luk red. Her 
tender hart kuddent stand quiet, listenin tu anothur's 
sorrers. I thote she lukked prettier than any woman 
I ever see as she tried tu smile at me thru her tears, 
and leaned her face on her hand. 

" I don't think I shall be abul tu sleep tu nite, Mr. 
Goff; I feel so sad," she sed plaintively. 

" It'll take sumraot more than poetry tu keep me 
awake," I sez. " Poetry jenrelly sends me tu sleep." 

"But think of him dyin in a 'Sylum. What he 
must hev suffurd ! " she sighed. 



ELIJER GOFF. 69 



" It's very 'ard," I sed, touched by this new vu of 
the subjeck. " Very 'ard ! Sum men seem tu get 
more'n thur share of suffurin in this world — sum less." 

" Everythin hez bin wisely orderd," she replide 
solumly. 

. I thote of Mariar and my wastid life, and of sum 
peple as hed never pade me, and thur wastid lives ; 
and I wonderd if it kud be so. 

I tuk up the next packet to change the subjeck, and 
fund it labeld il A run with the hounds." 

"This is more in my line," I sez. " He kan't be 
melankoly in this 'un," and I parst it tu the widder 
with a air of triumf, and then leaned bak in my chair 
tu listen. 




7o 



ELIJER GOFF. 





•lls^siii?^ 




iilillii 


- . 


zsMkrffiE^iWM'fi^ 




JZvm&ifitisz^^'- 




S^S-^^^^^ 





fi Run with the Hounds, 




HE hounds meet at Ystrad this morning. 
Shall we go 1 " asks my friend and host 
as he rises from the breakfast table and walks towards 
the window overlooking the Vale of Clwyd. "You 
can have the bay mare and I will take Albinus." I 
express my delight at the proposal, and the horses are 
ordered for ten o'clock. 

It is a bright morning, but clouds are passing across 
the sky, and shadows are gliding over the broad 
breast of the mountain ranges to the east of this 
charming valley. There have been storms during the 
night, and the gathering clouds foretell more. The 
little stream in the lowland shines like silver as the 
sunlight rests on it, and the hill sides are diapered 
with the russet of the ferns that are dead, and the 



ELIJER GOFF. 



bright green of the gorse bushes that have not yet 
lost their blossoms. Miles beyond the mountains are 
lost in mist, and their forms seem to melt into 
phantom shapes that suggest fancies of a matterless 
world. High above us is the old ruined castle, with 
its outer walls standing upon the steep rock and 
nestling among the luxuriant ivy that has clung around 
them for centuries ; and far away in front of us are 
the gentle undulations of Ystrad, with the white square 
modern hall, surrounded by leafless trees and broad 
sweeps of pasture land. 

Ten o'clock has arrived, and the horses are at the 
door. My host appears booted and spurred. He 
is dressed in the dark green coat of the hunt, while 
I am fortified with top boots and a reefer. 

tl The mare has a tender mouth, but ride her with 
a light hand and she will please you," observes my 
friend, as he springs lightly into his saddle, and pats 
the neck of his favourite chestnut. 

I have not followed the hounds for years, but 
have almost shut my eyes to all else save the 
cruelty of the sport; yet as we trot down the 
gravel drive and out into the lane, I feel the old 
enthusiasm, and the old love for the chase, come 



72 ELIJER GOFF. 



upon me as strongly as ever. The beautiful animal 
bears me swiftly along with a splendid action, and 
seems impatient to try its speed. 

We soon reach the foot of the hill on which the 
picturesque town of Denbigh stands, and proceed 
along the turnpike road, with Ruthin eight miles in 
our front. Suddenly diverging to the right, we 
enter the long lane that leads to Ystrad, having on 
our left hand a broad stretch of landscape, and on 
our right a pretty view of the town on the hill. 

We are joined by other horsemen, and proceed 
leisurely to the hall, where all meet preparatory to 
entering upon the campaign. There are several ladies 
present in carriages, but none on horseback. The 
field is composed of a deputy-lieutenant, and officers, 
professional men, clergymen's sons, and gentlemen- 
farmers ; dressed in various costumes, and generally 
speaking fairly mounted. The signal is given to 
start, and huntsmen and hounds move rapidly away 
eager for the sport. 

A broad stretch of ploughed land is the scene 
of the first cast. Other fields extend beyond 
and around it, and the view from the road on 
the top of the hill we have reached is a fine one. 



ELIJER GOFF. 73 



But the rain comes down at intervals in heavy 
showers, and the sky is laden with clouds that are 
coming from the south. A stiff breeze is springing up, 
and I feel cold as I sit quietly looking at the wet, 
cheerless country around, waiting for a find. The 
ploughed lands are soft and splashy, and the furrows 
and ditches are full to overflowing. It is hard walking 
and heavy riding, yet we do not mind it, and the 
gallant little horse of the huntsman gallops over the 
sloppy earth, again and again, fairly hiding his legs in 
the splash as he flies along. The other horsemen 
move quietly down the roads, which are perfect rivers 
of mud, and await the signal to join in the chase. 

All is silent for a time ; then we hear a well-known 
sound as the foremost dog catches the scent; the others 
quickly follow, and now there is the full music, so 
grateful to the huntsman's ears. A hundred paces in 
front of the dogs the startled hare is flying from her 
hiding-place, frightened by sounds she perhaps has 
heard before. Rapidly she bounds along, in a succes- 
sion of jumps, over the rough ridges of newly-turned 
clay, and climbs the slope at our feet. Suddenly she 
turns to the right, then downwards, and again upwards 
across the broad brown field, through a thick hedge, 



74 ELIJER GOFF. 



over the pasture, down into a patch of low land, then 
across the white road into a timbered acre or two at 
the foot of the slope. Meanwhile the dogs, with their 
noses near the ground, are patiently following the 
scent. While on a straight run they follow quickly, 
but at a turn they are for a moment puzzled, yet it is 
only for a moment ; the line is caught again, and the 
foremost dog is treading in the footsteps of the hare. 
On through that same gap in the hedge, and swiftly 
over the green field, down into the low ground, 
unerringly they fly along, as if they saw their victim 
beyond ; and now as they rush along there are broken 
sounds of music from mouths that thirst for blood, 
and there are twenty anxious faces that watch them, 
and twenty eager horses that are impatient to join 
in the chase. But the squadron is not yet formed. 
Some are here galloping over the green slopes, some 
there dashing along down the narrow roads, some 
mad-brain heading the hare amid the hearty curses 
of trained sportsmen ; men on foot running like 
maniacs, others less ardent climbing some vantage 
ground, and an. old farmer on the highest stump 
looking through a telescope a yard long. 

Down and down they go into that lowest patch of 



ELIJER GOFF. 75 



green, and as the dogs pass into the plantation there is 
an ominous silence, and every ear is strained to catch 
another cry from the puzzled hounds. Horsemen halt, 
foot followers come up to the front, and the squadron 
anxiously awaits the signal to charge again. Hark ! 
there is a yelp, and another, and now the welcome 
chorus. The scent is once more caught, but there is 
no full cry, no wild galloping over straight miles of 
country; the hare has again turned, and is coming 
towards us, the dogs rapidly following on the track. 
Now she passes through a high hedge that will try 
the horsemanship of many. Over goes the dun with 
its gallant rider, and close behind it comes,- the brave 
old chestnut that jumped these fencis fifteen years ago; 
away they fly over the dull green field beyond, leading 
the line of horses that follow in the jump. The hand- 
some gray refuses the hedge, and turns down with 
others into the lane. Such an animal, with a stout heart 
upon it, should run in a straight line. 

Every face is now turned towards the hill-side, 
thickly timbered with pines, and margined by a broad 
winding stream at its foot. The hare has rushed there 
to find a hiding-place, but closer and swifter follow the 
terrible foes, sure as retribution and unerring as 



76 ELIJER GOFF. 



destiny; closer and louder sound the yelps of the blood- 
thirsting pack, and there under the pines, where she 
hopes to find safety, she will die. Onward among the 
bare trees sweep the sanguine hounds, maddened by 
the joy they find in the keener scent, and the coming 
death scene, with its brief feast of blood lapped warm 
from their torn victim. The horsemen linger on the 
outskirts of the cover, which they cannot enter, and 
move along in the direction of the fierce sounds, 
which the breezes bear from the hounds, that are 
each moment growing wilder in their horrid rapture. 
But the chase is almost at an end. Each stride brings 
the pack nearer to their prey, and now, as the tired 
hare sees her pursuers, her eyes start from their hot 
sockets with an agony of fear. She makes a final 
bound for life down the abrupt rocks that cross her 
path ; but it is in vain — the pitiless dogs are crowding 
after her, and filling the cold forest with their savage 
discords. In a moment more they are upon her, and 
she dies, torn in pieces by a dozen mouths, that 
devour their prey ere the straggling horsemen reach 
the scene of their hurried banquet. 

Strange ! that as I leaned against a tree, with my 
arm through the bridle, and my hand upon the neck 



ELIjER GOFF. 77 



of the proud mare, I should feel ashamed of being in 
the picture. Strange! that just then laughter should 
sound discordant, and smiles should seem cruel. 
Strange! that the pines should sigh, as if they sorrowed 
over the passing of so small a life. 

Hark ! Once more the huntsman's horn rings 
through the damp air, and is echoed back by the 
damp hills. 

The unsatisfied dogs are called away while they are 
yet licking the blood from their large loose lips, and 
again they are led to the broad ploughed field to cross 
another scent and to run another course, for the 
agony of one little hare is too short for the pleasures 
of one long day. 

The next follows in nearly the same direction, 
but the hounds are baffled among the pine trees, 
and she escapes. A third is sought amid a drench- 
ing rain, and after we have crossed the swollen 
stream which carries the dogs down upon its foaming 
surface, the well-known cry of the harrier is once more 
heard, and the wild excitement of the horsemen is 
again renewed. I forget the cruelty and the scene of 
blood j the hounds are in full cry and other horsemen 
are ahead. The brave mare that carries me does not 



78 ELIJER GOFF. 



like the splash of hoofs she can pass, but rushes- 
onward to the front, and gallantly flies over hedge 
and ditch without a miss, needing neither whip 
nor spur. Her great heart cannot brook defeat, 
but gamely she works her way to the head of the 
now straggling line. Onward over fields that slope 
down towards the valley, and over streamlets that are 
swollen into deep torrents, and over hedges that are 
naked and black, but thickly jewelled with rain drops 
trembling on every spray, and sparkling in every fitful 
sun-gleam. Away over the sodden turf and the soft 
wet clay, caring not for wind or rain, forgetful of 
danger, wild with excitement, and madly revelling in 
the invigorating ecstasy of the chase. But the dogs 
are too swift, the doomed hare too slow, the pleasure 
too brief. Every stride is beginning to tell. The 
hounds are gaining rapidly on their victim, and the 
life of the beaten hare is drawing fastly to its close. 
" Up !" it is the last fence, and bravely is it taken. 
The foremost dog now in the centre of the sodden 
field draws close to the hare, and makes its final spring. 
There is a chorus of merciless cries, a surging circle of 
dogs round a bloody centre, a mangled, lifeless form, 
a licking of lips, and it is all over. 



ELIJER GOFF. 79 



And now homeward through the rain, well soaked 
and well splashed, we trot briskly along. I am over 
head and ears in love with the beautiful bay that has 
carried me so willingly and so well. I feel the bloom 
upon my face, and the fresh blood in my heart, and an 
appetite that when I am cupboardless I shall pray not 
to have. 

That evening I fell asleep in the firelight, and 
strangely I dreamed. I saw myself dashing along at 
the head of the horsemen, with the hounds in front 
gaining upon the hare, and the country passing, as I 
had seen it that day; and on and on we flew, and 
the sunshine lit up the earth till it seemed more 
lovely than the land I had known. Away over the 
flowered fields and the blossomed hedgerows, 'neath 
trees that bloomed with the bloom of eternal summer, 
and by the side of streams that flowed musically over 
the glittering rocks, and along lanes that were full of 
fragrance, and by the side of waters that were full of 
joy. The cry of the savage hounds broke horribly 
upon my ear as I drank in the delicious music of the 
birds that sang aloud in that lovely land. Yet still I 
followed the terrible sounds, and still the doomed 



80 ELIJER GOFF. 



hare flew on in her wild terror, with glaring eyes and 

bursting heart, till oh, merciful Powers ! there 

came a sudden blaze of light that seemed to open in 
our path, and strike us for an instant, blind. The 
hare leaped up and fell ; the dogs, checked suddenly 
in their flight, slid on, as they crouched in fear ; the 
horse that bore me reared up and pawed the light, 
and then, as if spellbound, sank upon the earth and 
stared. I stood astride the fallen steed, trembling in 
half blinded terror, with my face turned wonderingly 
towards the mystery that had come before me. Then 
the splendour opened, and there came forth from the 
avenue of glory an Angel of Pity, bright from the 
Pavilion of the Throne. I bowed my head and sank 
upon my fallen horse, and when I looked again 
towards the light I saw the Pitying Angel bending 
sadly over the panting hare, and I heard a voice, the 
like of which I had never heard on earth, ask, a Who 
is he that seeks to take thy little life, and in his 
wantonness would blot thee out for ever from among 
the fair creation ? " Then I buried my burning face 
in the horse's mane, and the dogs hid their cruel fangs 
among the flowers, and the birds broke off their song 
and sang to us no more ; and when I dared to look 



ELIJER GOFF. 8 1 



again towards the light, I saw a tear gathering in the 
Angel's eye as she raised the sinless hare tenderly in 
her arms, and looking at me with a sad reproach, 
passed again through the cloudlike portals of the 
glory whence she came. 

It was only a dream, yet it left a vision in my eye 
and a feeling in my heart that seemed to sadden the 
memory of the hunt that day, for beyond the recollec- 
tion of the wild delirium of the chase and the joy of 
rushing to the front, there comes to me the loud yell 
and the little cry I have heard before — a cry that 
denotes agony, and a yell that proclaims death ; and 
even though the life that passes has no share with us 
in the shame and sorrow, or the pain and pleasure of 
our world, yet to me a joy is sullied when it is pur- [ 
chased with the price of suffering, even though it be I 
only the dying agony of an unoffending hare. 



''Poor little wee thing!" sed the widder, with a 
tender smile, that wild hev bin almost tu much fur a 
man. " How happy it must hev bin nestlin close tu 
the anjel's hart." 



82 ELIJER GOFF. 



" I wish he hedn't sed anythin about that dream," I 
sez : " it's made me want tu nestle, fur I've bin a gud 
deal worried," and I sot lukkin intu the fire as 
blazed away as cheerful as if the parst hed bin the 
most amoozin event as ever ockurred. 

" Yu must be pashunt," she sed. " Thur may be 
an angel watchin over yu at this moment. We kan't 
tell." 

"Anjels don't seem tu take much interest in ile 
and drugs," I sez. " No latur than yesterday a pusson 
died, as owed me twenty pounds, and he's left nothin 
behind him except his mortal remains, and a krowd 
of sorrerin krediturs tu mourn thur loss. But we 
kan't interfere with the parst, so let's perceed with the 
futur," I added, takin up anothur packet, and openin 
it reddy fur the widder tu read. It wos numberd 
with the figger 5, and wos headed, " In the Twilight." 




ELIJER GOFF. 



»3 




J N 



I 



THE WILIGHT. 




1NCE more in the home of happier years, 
With the twilight shades around ! 
While the dark sad trees, like mourning plumes-, 
Stand dropping their tears on living tombs, 
Where all joy lies dead, but love still blooms, 
Like a flower on an old grave mound. 



Ah, me ! how quickly the years go past ! 

How swiftly the hours go by ! 
It seems but a day — yet, years have gone, 
Bearing their sorrows and joys along ! 
But leaving behind sad echoes of song, 

That linger 'tween earth and sky. 



And out from the past there seem to come 
Sweet sounds, that the lime trees know, 
And music, that never will cease to dwell 
In the heart that cherished and loved it well- 
Ay, loved too deep for the tongue to tell, 
In the long, long, long ago. 



84 ELIJER GOFF. 



And far in the solemn and silent night, 
With the moon and stars overhead, 

The eyes that weep, and the heart that's sad, 

Keep their watch for the visions that made them 
glad, 

'Ere eyes grew dim, or the brain grew mad 
With love for the love that's dead. 

But tears may fall from the eyes that watch ; 

And grief may throb in the brain, 
'Till the heart grow cold, the eyelids close, 
And the brain find rest in its long repose. 
Sad dreams will rise from the river that flows 

Through life, and bring anguish again. 



u How is it," I sez, seein the widder lukkin very 
silent, "that when a man hez anythin on hand in 
the way of greef as he puts it out in vusses ? " 

(i I think it must be that they ken put so much in 
so fu words," replide the widder, tryin tu sigh away 
the effex of the poetry. 

" That's jest it," I korroberated. " If they tride it 
in proze, they'd never know when tu stop. I've 



ELIJER G'OFF. S$ 



knowd peple rite fur a hole lifetime and never say 
anythin ; in fak, very fu on 'em du say anythin." 

" I ken skarsley bleeve as the poor gentleman as 
died in the 'Sylum rote all these papers. Still thur 
all in his handritin," sed the widder, takin up the 
next packet, and lukkin at it kuryusly. 

u Is it poetry ? " I inqwired. 

" No," she replide, " it's proze ; it's called, ' My 
Landlady.'" 

"Then," I sez, "if it's proze, his landlady wosn't a 
anjel like — ." I finished the sentence with a luk as 
seemed tu ring thru the house. 

The little hand as held the packet trembled, and 
the face that bent ovur it blushed, and the sweet vise 
warbled as the widder began tu read packet No. 6 : — 




86 



ELIJER GOFF. 




My Landlady. 




| Y landlady is rather fat, and quite forty. 
She looks as if she had once been young, 
and when young, fair ; but time has toned down the 
lustre of her eyes, and sobered the expression of her 
face. She now smiles the smile of a matron, and 
speaks of her grandchild without wincing. 

Ten years of widowhood have proved that her late 
husband, though a most estimable man, was not indis- 
pensable to a continuance of her life ; yet she mourns 
him still, and in certain moods she fairly revels in a flood 
of eloquent eulogiums, that make me regret, with her, 
that the world cannot produce another like unto him. 

The history of her life, which has been presented 
to me in a very fragmentary form, contains many 
touching passages illustrative of the cruel operations 



ELIJER GOFF. 87 



of Time. From a confidential communication she 
made to- me at our first interview, it appears that she 
was originally intended as an ornament for a much 
higher position than that in which she now shines. 

Fortune at one time smiled upon her house, but 
4( smiled only to deceive." A succession of disasters 
sapped the ancestral fabric, and down it came. The 
tide of prosperity receded, and bore away on its 
sobbing bosom the accumulated glory of six genera- 
tions of bakers (this I learned from another source). 
She naturally felt proud of her accomplishments in 
those palmy days ; of her knowledge of music and 
skill in painting ; of her love for languages and her 
graceful dancing ; and the hundred other attainments 
which had shed a lustre over her girlhood. 

In referring to the sad change in her social altitude 
her grief naturally got the better of her grammar, and 
she had long ago discovered that unaspirated vowels 
could not express wrongs like hers. I did not then 
fully realise the wreck that receding wave of Fortune 
had left behind, but I know now, and I have wondered 
with her how she could ever be happy in a position in 
which monotint studies with a blacking brush were all 
that compensated her for the loss of her exquisite 



ELIJER GOFF. 



painting of the golden days gone by. It was unutter- 
ably painful to find that the brilliant execution on the 
piano of former years had subsided into an inaccurate 
performance with one finger, and that her lingual 
accomplishments had gradually undergone a process 
of disintegration, till the syllabic atoms were all of a 
heap. Her sylph-like figure had, from causes over 
which she had no control, persistently developed itself 
into a form that could never be described by the 
geometrical definition of a spot. The dancing that 
had once charmed every manly eye and fluttered 
every manly heart had slowly but surely declined in 
grace, and had lost that fascinating power which the 
confirmed waddle of after years could but imperfectly 
replace. 

No wonder that she sighed when she spoke of 
the past; it would have been better for her if she 
could have forgotten it ; but it was not to be. Her 
hands, now so large and red, were once white and 
small. Each time she looked upon them now, she 
•was reminded of what they had been before she 
tumbled from her high estate and filled her own coal- 
box. Then, when the stern duties of the scullery or 
the kitchen came upon her, day by day, she loved to 



ELIJER GOFF. 89 



forget her whereabouts in a dream of her girlhood ; 
but no dream has ever interfered with the punctual 
preparation of my weekly bill. 

In caligraphy my landlady is not proficient, but 
this does not detract from her greatness of character. 
In her figures she is painfully legible, and I do not 
think there is a woman anywhere w r ho can add up a 
column with more freedom than she does. One and 
two are five, and seven are fourteen, and eight are 
twenty-five, and the thing is done. I have known her 
spell cabbage in many abbreviated forms, but there 
have been no abbreviations in the price. She has 
written "pade" at the foot of my weekly bills so often 
that I have begun to doubt my own accuracy. I do 
not w r onder at this when I remember the number of 
false impressions she has removed from my mind. 
There was a time when I could not conceive it 
possible for a man to consume the quantity of pro" 
visions that I am assured, by her periodical statements, 
have been disposed of by my digestive forces week by 
week; but it would be madness now to resist the 
conviction that animal life, so far as my case is con- 
cerned, requires more nourishment than is generally 
considered necessary for one who wears an ordinary- 
sized waistcoat, 



90 ELIJER GOFF. 



I once ventured meekly to remonstrate with her on 
her allowing me to ruin my nervous system by an 
inordinate use of tea. It was not that I then felt any 
ill effects from my excess, or that I had any very vivid 
recollections of having indulged in the beverage un- 
usually strong; on the contrary, my urn has never 
to my knowledge contained a liquid darker in colour 
than pale brandy ; but I had foolishly conceived the 
idea that the pound of green tea referred to in every 
week's bill would eventually prove disastrous to the 
mucous-membrane of the stomach. She evidently 
endeavoured to avert the danger, for subsequently my 
tea had no colour at all; and on one occasion having 
failed to detect any flavour, I curiously looked into 
the urn, when I found to my surprise that the fragrant 
leaf had been omitted altogether. She had told me 
that her memory often failed her, and this little 
omission corroborated her statement. I blush at my 
simplicity at this time in supposing that a reduction 
in the quantity consumed would be followed by a 
corresponding reduction in the weekly item. Such 
an absurd idea never entered her mind. Misfortune 
had not yet reduced her to the study of trifles. She 
looked at things comprehensively, and from the mere 



ELIJER GOFF. 91 



force of habit she could enumerate the items of my 
next week's bill as well as she could those of the week 
before. It mattered very little to either of us whether 
she took sixpence off the tea and put sixpence on 
"sope;" or whether she reduced the outlay on milk 
and stuck it on "coles." 

Sometimes she condescends to explain why my 
expenses have an upward tendency, but always 
apologises for troubling me with the mention of so 
unimportant a matter of detail. 

My landlady's powers of conversation are surprising. 
I have known her stand at my door with a coal shovel 
in her hand, and pour forth a torrent of words with an 
unbroken fluency that could not be exceeded. The 
process of fire-trimming invariably warms her into 
speech, but it is not until she has taken up a strong 
position, with a good line of retreat in the rear, that 
she really commences the attack. 

The subjects of her discourses are not very various, 
but each one selected by her is treated exhaustively. 
The unfortunate defectiveness of her memory will, no 
doubt, account for the trifling contradictions which I have 
noticed in the recitals of past events given at different 
times. On atmospheric changes, however, she speaks 



92 ELIJER GOFF. 



with wonderful accuracy, and keeps me regularly 
posted up in any alteration that may take place ; but 
the topic on which she loves best to dilate is that 
connected with the antecedents and future hopes of 
our neighbours. How she has collected so many 
facts relative to the stuck-up people on the one side 
and the struck-down people on the other has ever 
been a perfect mystery to me. She knows the 
extravagant proceedings that are ultimately to prove 
disastrous to No. 3, and the economical measures 
that are necessary to sustain No. 1. The lodger on 
the right has incurred her displeasure by wearing two 
pairs of clean boots per day, and the lodger on the 
left has excited her admiration by dining in town on 
Saturdays, and by putting out his gas at nine. 

I have often had occasion to think that the meat safe 
must be very defective in construction, and that the 
cat, to which I am a stranger, must have been 
educated secularly, and kept in lamentable ignorance 
of the inflexible nature of the eighth commandment. 
I have known ribs of beef carefully removed from 
my table on Sunday, and placed in the larder for 
security ; but by some mysterious agency, which my 
landlady has never satisfactorily explained, they 



ELI-JER GOFF. 93 



have been abstracted without my authority, and have 
never been seen by me again. She has hinted 
darkly at the dishonest habits of certain vendors 
of rubbing-stones that frequent the back of our 
premises at fixed matinal hours, and has also 
lamented the unfortunate sympathy that is said to 
exist between them and domestics generally. She 
has further explained to me the ridiculously simple 
arrangements which are intended to assist the back 
door in resisting the efforts of any person or persons 
burglariously inclined, and she has given me instances 
of the larder in question having been stripped of 
everything suitable for conversion into chyme. 

It is quite pretty to hear her laugh as she announces 
a fresh depredation, and I sometimes feel that these 
periodical cases of petty larceny form cheerful 
episodes that break up the monotony of every-day 
life. I blush to own that I was once guilty of imagin- 
ing that a resemblance existed between the cold beef 
reported to have been purloined and that which 
afterwards formed an appropriate centrepiece on the 
table of my landlady. Happily, I am conscious that 
such suspicions are very contemptible, and I have 
often sincerely wished that in order to avoid them my 



94 ELIJER GOFF. 



landlady's tastes were not identical to my own, so 
that it would be almost impossible for me to recog- 
nise in her leg of mutton the remains of my ribs of 
beef. This similarity in our tastes would, with any- 
one less respectable than my landlady, have led to 
dishonest practices ; as it is, the mistakes that have 
arisen from it have frequently led to a remonstrance 
on my part and deep expressions of regret on hers. 

But there is another circumstance that has occasioned 
me inconvenience. 

It appears that we have residing permanently 
in our house a number of vagabond mice that 
indulge in the most criminal habits, and take the 
most unwarrantable liberties with my property. I 
have never seen anything to corroborate her state- 
ment, yet evidence is not wanting to prove that 
what my landlady states is perfectly correct. I 
have known a pot of my preserves more than half 
demolished in a single night ; and as for sardines, they 
have on more than one occasion been taken, in the 
aggregate, box and all. This would indicate that 
these lawless mice make raids on my. cupboard in 
well organised bodies, and carry on their nefarious 
operations with a fair amount of ingenuity, and 



ELIJER GOFF. 95 



certainly with considerable success. I once suc- 
ceeded in tracking them, but it must have been quite 
an exceptional case, as they had in this instance 
playfully perpetrated a practical joke, simply trans- 
ferring the sardines from my chiffonier to my land- 
lady's cupboard, and had not, so far, refreshed 
themselves with more than the second row. We 
adopted several ingenious devices that in ordinary 
cases have proved successful, but in this they were 
absurdly abortive. Patent traps, rendered irresistible 
by a fascinating lump of toasted cheese, were placed 
invitingly for the marauders, but to no purpose. 
Cheese was evidently not considered a delicacy. We 
tried bacon, but with the same unsatisfactory result. 
With a desire to appeal to all tastes we submitted 
candle, but even that dainty esculent failed to tempt 
the cunning creatures that had been so long pam- 
pered with the contents of my cupboard. Yet 
they evidently understood our hostile attitude, for 
they did not return for some little time after the 
trap and its delicious morsels were pronounced 
ineffective, and consequently removed. At length, 
when they did return, they attacked with a vigour 
unprecedented in the chronicles of their tribe, and at 



g6 ELIJER GOFF. 



one time it seemed doubtful whether the chiffonier 
itself would not fall a victim to their rapacity. An 
idea floated in my mind. I would secure the tem- 
porary assistance of all the cats in the neighbourhood, 
and declare the whole place in a state of siege ; but 
the alarming consequences that might result from 
such a course presented themselves to me so strongly 
that the strategic measure was abandoned ; and after 
mature deliberation, I resolved to purchase a Chubb 
lock, and resort to the disagreeable alternative of 
locking up. My landlady partly disapproved of the 
measure, inasmuch as she considered an ordinary lock 
would do ; but on this point I was immovable, and 
the cupboard became impregnable. The pantry, 
however, remains in an undefended state, and my 
landlady, being of so contented a disposition, hesitates 
to make any alteration in existing arrangements, but 
simply sympathises with me in my losses and speaks 
cheerfully of her own. 

Among other weaknesses that have grown upon me 
in my solitude, I find a partiality for bottled beer at 
supper has become, perhaps, the most confirmed. 
Smith, who occupies an adjoining room, is similarly 
afflicted. He is very unlike me in most things ; but 



ELIJER GOFF. 97 



in two particulars we are twin-like : we order our beer 
from the same brewer, and we order it in dozens. 
This resemblance is all the more striking when we 
consider how utterly we are opposed in all other 
matters. Smith, for instance, goes to bed very late, 
and doesn't get up very early. I go to bed two hours 
before midnight, and rise four hours before Smith. 
Even in the trifling matter of costume we are most 
unreconcilable. Smith believes that primary colours 
are essential to his happiness \ I take an opposite 
view, and content myself with feeble tertiaries. He 
exceeds me in an eye-glass, but I overlap him in the 
size of my umbrella ; and so it did seem strange that on 
the one question of beer, a question on which so many 
differ, Smith and I should agree. This agreement, 
however, has led to some confusion — not as to 
principle, but as to the quantity consumed. 

In one of those lucid moments that seem as a rule to 
come upon us when we can the least utilise them, it 
occurred to me, as I sat pondering over one of my 
weekly bills, that there was some unexplained mystery 
in connection with the very subject on which I and 
Smith agreed. It appeared to me that there was no 
arithmetical reason why the item charged for " bottel 

a 



98 ELIJER GOFF. 



beer " should be gradually enlarged when there was 
no corresponding increase in the consumption ; yet, 
on referring to the past, so unpoetically recorded on a 
file of bills, I found evidence that plainly convicted 
me of having become, by easy stages, an habitual 
drunkard. 

At the risk of appearing a perjurer in the 
eyes of any twelve patient and just jurymen, I could 
have sworn that I had not exceeded my first week's 
number of bottles in any succeeding week, and that 
therefore the charge of intemperance and the charge 
for beer were both unjust. I meekly asked my 
landlady if she could account in any way for the 
discrepancy ; but I asked her delicately, for I feared 
she might think I doubted her integrity, and I knew that 
she would never have forgiven this. 

How could she ? 

She went to chapel twice on Sundays, and would not 
be persuaded to laugh or clean boots on the Sabbath 
day. She had, too, a missionary-box that never grew 
heavy, and a Sunday heart that never grew light. I 
never knew her receipt a bill without concluding 
the somewhat tedious process with some pious utter- 
ances; nor have I ever known her fail on these 



ELIJER GOFF. 99 



occasions to remind me how hard it is for poor 
honest people to live. 

Notwithstanding her piety, my landlady was a 
woman of vast domestic experience, and seemed 
able to grapple with any question however subtle; 
and so to her this new question of beer would 
probably prove a mere trifle, and most easy of 
explanation. Her first idea, however, was that 
I must be mistaken. I shook my head sadly 
but respectfully, as one who had tried that idea 
before and had found it untenable. She immediately 
invited me into the cellar and pointed out the place 
where my bottles stood. 

We found that Smith's bottles ranged themselves 
in dangerous proximity to mine, and the notion, 
flashed upon us that Smith in the hurry of the 
moment and darkness of the midnight hour might 
visit the wrong store in mistake. His thirst often 
remained unsatisfied long after the rest of the house- 
hold were in bed, and such a mistake was easily made ; 
so here we examined Smith's case, and finding it 
suspicious, we condemned him without a hearing, and 
my landlady voluntarily offered to keep our bottles in 
different cellars and prevent any further confusion. 



LofC. 



IOO ELIJER GOFF. 



The item for drink hereafter resumed its normal 
insignificance, but just then the butchers raised their 
prices, as one man, and up went the item of meat. 
Except on moral grounds, Smith might just as well 
have gone on with his mistakes, for the weekly total 
had apparently by this time assumed the immutability 
so closely identified with the laws that kept down 
the passions of the Medes and Persians. 

It is hard to cook for one, and my landlady, with a 
frankness that always disarms me, admits it ; yet I do 
think she considers my happiness too lavishly when 
in providing me with a Saturday steak and a Sunday 
chop dinner she places before me enough for a family 
of ten. 

I was taught in childhood to dislike anything 
approximating waste, and before I had fairly made 
myself cognisant of the fact that following Saturday 
and Sunday came the washing day, and following 
close upon the washing day came ironing day, and 
after that the charwoman and cleaning day, I not 
unnaturally experienced remonstrative sensations that 
were entirely the result of this early portion of my 
education. Even now it does occur to me that 
Smith's larder must be but feebly and inefficiently 



ELIJER GOFF. TO I 



represented at these domestic festivities, or that the 
appetites of the working classes must be, relative to 
mine, in the proportion of three to one, which is 
giving a high tribute to the gastronomical attributes 
of the said working classes, a tribute I have certainly, 
more than once, had reason to suspect is richly 
deserved. When you see a solitary man toss the 
bones of two ducks into his fireplace at one sitting, 
or apply his tongue to the dish after annihilating two 
or three pounds of tough steak, you cannot avert the 
reflection that continued competition in such a matter 
would gradually induce a habit totally at variance 
with the sober dictates of a well-regulated stomach* 
Yet it has been my sickening privilege to see the feat 
accomplished by an unassuming artisan, whose specific 
gravity was registered under ten stone. 

Of course my landlady, being mortal, has her 
weaknesses. She has a deeply-rooted prejudice 
against lady lodgers; cannot admire, or respect, a 
gentleman who buys his own grocery or makes his 
own tea ; disapproves altogether of social gatherings 
in apartments ; never has the courage to put the gas 
meter on at the full, and is dead against the hall lamp. 
In extenuation of these trifling weaknesses, it must be 



102 ELIJER GOFF. 



said that ladies do ring the bell too often, do betray 
their suspicions in locking everything up, and most 
certainly do correct or explain without the least con- 
sideration for a landlady's tender sensibilities. Then, 
again, think of a gentleman condescending to make 
his own tea ! or buy his own butter ! One can 
scarcely wonder at the unanimity of opinion among 
all shades and classes of landladies on this point ; and 
I certainly do not wonder that my landlady, with her 
lofty antecedents and her undiminished love for the 
noble and the true, should curl her soiled but patrician 
lips at such a fall from the dignity of manhood. But 
why she should be so timid of gas and so neglectful 
of the hall lamp has always been a question beyond 
me. Then, too, I fail to divine her reason for objecting 
to furnish my room with a coalbox, unless it is that, in 
her consideration for my comfort, she prefers seeing 
that I do not on the one hand roast myself to death, 
nor on the other hand deny myself a fair amount of 
warmth, such as the seasons might require. This I 
should not call a weakness \ it is only a peculiarity. 

As I have said, these trifling features cannot, and 
do not, detract from her greatness of character. What 
are these little failings compared with the number and 



ELIJER GOFF. 103 



strength of her virtues ? Those who know her as I do 
will bear testimony to their utter insignificance ; they 
will pity her in her misfortunes, and respect her in her 
humble sphere, surrounded as it is by evidences of a 
refinement that even poverty cannot set aside ; they 
will listen to her monodigital music sorrowfully, and 
endeavour to imagine what it once was ; they will 
trace troubles in every aspirated vowel, and blighted 
hopes in every unaspirated H ; they will see industry 
in her hands where once they might have seen the 
marbling of patrician blood ; they will think of the 
sad workings of time when they see her form, and 
miss the music of her better days when they hear her 
voice ; and as for those whose privilege it will be in 
after time to see her bills and check her addings up, 
they will but feel with me that it is a pity that poverty 
should ever come, or that those who have once risen 
should ever fall. 



The widder seemed tu enjy that packet rite thru, 
and forgot all her tears. 

" That brings the histry of the world up intu supper 



104 ELIJER GOFF. 



time," I sez, puttin down my pipe and tyin up the 
papers we'd red in a bundel by thurselves, and 
arrangin the othurs fur futur akshun. 

"I'm glad it wos not a sad wun like sum of the 
othurs," she sed, risin frum her chair. 

" It's jest as well," I sez, "as the gastrik jooses 
don't kare fur tu much sorrer. It interferes with thur 
dooties, and then thur's a row in the house, and sum- 
times a funeral sets in." 

We hed supper and talked of the papers the widder 
hed red, and then the supper wos kleared away and 
the readin wos resoomed. 

The next packet in order of konseketif rotashun wos : 
kalled " Sudden Death; or, Love at First Sight." 

" My gudness," I sez, " that's a promisin beginnin. 
Thur's all the dreds and desires as evur wos, frum the 
fust of Adam down tu next Kristmas Eve in that 'un." 

" I hope it will be a luv tale and end appy," sed 
the widder. 

u It won't be troo tu life if it du," I sez, judgin 
frum my own experiunts, and sinkin intu profund 
silents, as she began tu read packet No. 7 : — 



ELIJER GOFF. 



105 




Sudden Death ; 

OR, 

Loye at First Sight. 
a novelette in the modern twaddle style. 




OUSIN Louie— Mr. Mortimer." 
" Fred — Miss Staveley." 

The waves heard this upon the sands at Southport. 

Mr. Mortimer was myself. 

Miss Staveley was an angel. 

I felt it when I looked through my blushes at the 
beautiful face, with downcast eyes, ripe cherry lips, 
golden hair, blooming cheeks, delicately chiselled 
nose, marble forehead \ in a word, the every feature 
of Miss Staveley. She was an angel, and I felt like 
one unworthy to be in her heaven. Her divine 
beauty made me for the moment dumb, and when she 



106 ELIJER GGFF. 



raised her blue, tender eyes and looked at me through 
her blushes, I felt that I should like to sit down, for 
the paralysis of love was upon me, and I was sinking 
rapidly into that blissful state of wretched imbecility 
that accompanies the first taste of things celestial upon 
earth. 

It was all so sudden, too. I felt perfectly defence- 
less. 

I had walked about, and had been wheeled 
about, the world for twenty years, and had looked, 
upon faces that were very fair, and I saw that they 
were good ; but beyond what I had read in medical 
works, I had no particular reason to believe that 
Nature had done me the favour to provide me with a 
heart — a heart capable of such unaccountable things 
as I had seen recorded in almost every novel published 
in three volumes. Nor had I in the least anticipated 
that I should ever be so far lost in the heights of 
imagination as to fancy myself in Elysium while 
standing upon the Southport sands. Yet it was so ; 
and I knew it was so, but my tongue refused to utter 
one word of what I felt. I coughed, and Tom 
Malperton (whom I shall ever hold responsible for the 
doings of that day) mocked me. I gave him what I 



ELIJER GOFF. 107 



considered at the time a withering look, but he didn't 
fade, and when he smiled at Miss Mortrmer the 
withering went back into my own heart. But she 
didn't smile, and I thanked her in my thoughts. Then 
I felt a little courage come, and go, and then come 
again, and at last I spoke. 

I have no recollection now of what I said, 
but I remember that my throat was very rough 
and dry, and I remember, too, that Miss Staveley 
laughed, and Tom Malperton laughed \ but her 
laughing was rich music — Tom's wasn't. And I 
blushed more than ever, and looked down at a 
pretty little foot that peeped out from the circle of 
white embroidery encompassing the hallowed spot of 
earth on which she stood. Then Tom (whom I was 
beginning to hate) said something very ridiculous and 
childish about a resemblance between my face and a 
red, red rose. I tried to laugh, and felt sick, but 
I was glad to find Miss Staveley saw nothing amusing 
in his impertinent reference to my face, and this time 
I thanked her with my eyes. 

Then there came another awkward pause, the most 
awkward lever remember. I couldn't raise my eyes from 
the toe of that little boot, and the angel in front of me 



Io8 ELIJER GOFF. 



seemed lost in the study of a pebble, a dirty little pebble, 
that had somehow got upon those almost pebbleless 
sands, and would keep near the end of her umbrella. 
She turned it over so gently and lovingly that I wished 
I had been that pebble, that she might so toy with me 
and forget all else save me. But the wish and the 
pebble were almost forgotten when Tom Malperton 
broke out into shameful laughter, and said a thing 
that made my very soul jump. Could I believe my 
ears ? He asserted I was " struck," and Miss 
Staveley heard him. He added, he didn't wonder, 
for his cousin Louie "was a regular stunner." 

Oh, how she blushed 1 She was a trifle hard, too, 
upon the pebble, and she buried it in the sand, and I 
felt it would be appropriate to the occasion to shed 
a tear upon the mound — but didn't. 

I have a dim recollection of having said some very 
silly things, about the waves coming by and by to sob 
over it, and about the sadness associated with a soli- 
tary life by the sea, and about several other things 
that had no fitness whatever either as to time or place; 
but when I looked up and saw the hateful smile upon 
Tom's face, my feeble poetry gave place to an expres- 
sion that was intended to identify him with the most 



ELIJER GOFF. 109 



stupid of the brute creation. I verily believe that, if 
he had remained upon the scene much longer, I 
should have consigned him to a still lower place ; but 
a sudden idea seemed to strike him. I saw by the 
twinkle of his eye that mischief was in his thoughts, 
yet I felt nothing worse than his presence could come. 

Although I had liked Tom Malperton well in the 
days that came before this day, I could scarcely endure 
his presence now. His manner to his cousin seemed 
to me painfully familiar. I felt a shock every time he 
spoke to her, and I was full of indignation when he 
threw his jokes at me in her presence. Such a change 
in feeling I had never known before. 

All at once, in the midst of one of those lulls in the 
conversation that came then, as they so often come 
where people have too many feelings to interpret in 
too short a time, Tom turned gravely towards his 
cousin and said, " Will you excuse me this morning, 
Louie; I have an important engagement at eleven, 
and it is now half-past ten. I am afraid I shall be 
late. Fred will take good care of you in my absence — 
won't you, Fred, old boy?" and he turned to me with 
a look I am afraid Miss Staveley noticed, for she did 
the red, red rose ; and I have every reason to think I 



IIO ELIJER GOFF. 



did the peony as I stammered out something supposed 
to be indicative of my pleasure in my appointment as 
Miss Staveley's cavalier. 

We stood looking at the retreating figure of Tom 
Malperton as he walked towards the town, turning 
round occasionally to wave his hand and shake his 
fist in the privileged manner of an old friend ; and 
when at last he reached the promenade and was lost 
to view, it occurred to me that / was Fred and that 
Miss Staveley was Tom's cousin Louie. 

She was standing in the same position as when she 
buried the pebble in the sand ; and when I looked 

down I found the mound gone, and . Well, I 

was getting jealous of that pebble ; over and over it 
went ; tickled into one place and then tickled back 
again ; looked down on tenderly by those lovely eyes, 
smiled at by those lovely lips, caressed by the end of 
her umbrella, touched by the sole of her foot. 

" Ah, me!' ; I sighed, and she sighed too,' but 
her sigh was an octave higher than mine, and 
immeasurably sweeter. 

There we stood on the sands, with soft murmurs 
of the sea on the one side, and the soft murmur 
of the breeze on the other ; the flat waste of sand 



ELIJER GOFF. Ill 



before us, and the flat spreading town behind us \ the 
clear warm sun in the clear blue sky, and two hearts 
that were beating quicker than they had done in their 
days of loveless rest. 

I don't know how long we stood without speaking ; 
but all at once there came over me a sense of the 
magnitude of my responsibility, and with it came an 
unaccountable thirst. I coughed, and tried viciously 
to swallow something that persistently refused to be 
swallowed. I would have given a jewel for a lump 
of ice or a slice of lemon ; a glass of sherry would 
have been nectar; a cluster of grapes, ambrosia; 
anything to clear my voice, that I might express 
melodiously the rich music of my mushroom love. 

I believe at that moment I must have been standing 
over at the knees and trembling, as I have seen old 
cab horses stand and tremble, for the sudden attack 
of love had made me weak, and had upset all the 
coolness that I flattered myself I had acquired. I 
must have been out of sorts, for I cannot in fairness 
to myself believe that in health I could have been so 
suddenly reduced to a condition totally at variance 
with all the estimates I had formed of my strength. 
I am supported in this belief by the fact that when 
Miss Staveley at length raised her eyes and looked at 



112 ELIJER GOFF. 



me, she exclaimed anxiously, " Mr. Mortimer, are you 
ill?" 

What a delicious moment ! Those sweet, tender 
eyes were now gazing anxiously at me; that little hand 
was laid on my arm ; that young heart was all in a 
flutter of fear lest I should die. Can you wonder that 
I should feel worse, when an increase in the graver 
symptoms brought me such unmeasured happiness, 
and might destroy for ever the reserve that had existed ? 
Can you wonder that in husky tones I should feebly 
express a fear that I was about to faint, and that I 
should try to induce a flabbiness of body and a 
looseness of limb in support of the idea ? 

" Hadn't you better sit down until you feel stronger ?" 
said Miss Staveley, with a look of increasing anxiety 
that made me happier than ever ; and she added, " I 
will run and dip my handkerchief in the sea, and place 
it on your forehead ; it will revive you." 

As I write this in after days, I am conscious of a 
blush when I record the fact that I deliberately sank 
upon the sands, and tried to impart to my body a 
jelly-fish limpness that would place me beyond the 
suspicion of acting. I fancy I therein succeeded. 
Then, too, in addition to my other symptoms, I found 



ELIJER GOFF. 113 



I had sat down in a puddle that the tide had left 
behind, and no one could possibly believe that was a 
premeditated act. The thickest cloth becomes satu- 
rated in time, and so I found, but I didn't in the least 
care, for I was becoming hardened ; and I felt, as I 
saw that angel form flying towards the margin of the 
laughing waters, that my happiness was far too great 
to be interfered with by bodily sensations of any kind. 
And when she came back, blushing and out of breath, 
and placed her cold, wet handkerchief on my brow, 
and tapped it daintily with her fingers, I sat entranced. 
What mattered it if the salt water did trickle down my 
nose, and from my chin, and into my eyes, and down 
my neck ! I was too bewildered with the circumstance 
and pomp of love to notice it. The happiness was so 
great I began to fear it was all a dream, and I tried if 
I could wake, foolishly forgetting that if it was indeed 
a vision that had stolen beneath my closed eyelids it 
would leave me when the eyelids were upraised. But, 
no ! it was no dream. There was water at the end of 
my nose ; there was a puddle on the sand ; and there, 
too, standing over me, watching the effect of her 
ministering, was the angel I silently adored. She 
looked anxious still, lest all her ministering should be 



114 ELIJER GOFF. 



in vain, and the reaper should there and then treat me 
as a flower. 

I felt that there was no barrier between us now, 
that the spell that had held me tongue-tied was 
broken, that in future we should be at least friends ; 
and as another hope fluttered in my mind the blood 
came back to my cheeks, and my heart throbbed 
wildly and heavily, as if it yearned to leave its own 
poor casket for a better. 

It dawned upon me then that I was in love, madly 
in love with an angel that had come to me in her pity; 
in love with a fair creature I had not seen half an 
hour, and might never see again. The thought reduced 
me to a state of profound misery, and I believe that 
if I had been ten years younger I should have thrown 
my arms around her neck and sobbed for hours. 

There I sat, impostor as I was, allowing myself to 
be treated for an ailment I 'never had. The very 
waves seemed to splash their reproaches towards me ; 
but I cared not — I was happy. 

It was such ecstasy to meet her gaze and see her 
timorous smile, and hear her voice when she asked 
me if I was better; but very dreadful to hear me 
falsely whisper, "No, do it again." 



ELIJER GOFF. 115 



Then she did turn the handkerchief again and patted 
it, and ran her fingers through an unruly lock of hair 
that would come in the way. And when at last I 
ventured to smile and impress a wet, salt kiss upon 
her unsuspecting hand, and tell her that I feared years 
of devotion could not repay such kindness as hers, she 
blushed more deeply than I had seen her blush before, 
and seemed to have no strength or feeling left in the 
little hand I had kissed ; so I kept it in my own, and 
pressed it, and looked on it passionately, and kissed it 
again and again. Then all at once she seemed to 
remember where it was, and withdrew it gently, telling 
me she was sure I was well now, and saying she 
thought I might venture to walk a little. 

Her words were sweet laws to me, so I took the 
embroidered lace-edged handkerchief from my burning 
forehead, and wrung the salt water out of it and tore it 
in my earnestness^ and made a number of very foolish 
observations apologetically, and did all kinds of 
ridiculous things that, looked at in the cold, passion- 
less light of after years, appear undoubted evidences 
of insanity; but it was the insanity that makes us 
believe in earth, and yearn less for heaven; that 
makes us want no other angel than the one we have 



1 1 6 ELIJER GOFF. 



found — no other scene than that in which she moves — 
no other music than her voice — no other beauty than 
the beauty of her face — no other treasure than the 
fulness of her love — no other idol than herself. 

I rose very slowly, and very reluctantly, from the 
damp sand, for I feared that the sympathy I had 
excited in Miss Staveley's breast would be withdrawn 
when she saw me numbered once more among the 
able-bodied ; and in a measure it was so, for when I 
had brushed all the sand from my clothes, and tried 
to pull my wet collars into something like a sense of 
their position, I looked imploringly at her, but found 
no tender look in return. To my intense mortification 
she was again calmly looking down, and again tickling 
that confoundedly happy pebble. I looked for that 
particular stone days afterwards with a view to ven- 
geance, but I never saw it again. Whether the tide 
came up and mercifully bore it away into the silent 
depths of the ocean, or whether it had been gathered 
by the children whom I had seen playing upon the 
sands, I can now never know. But it passed 
mysteriously from the shore. 

Then I spoke in a low, tremulous voice : " I am 
sorry, Miss Staveley, that I am well again, for I was 



ELIJER GOFF. Il£ 



so happy when you thought me ill and cared for me 
so tenderly, and — and you forgot all about that 

peb ." And then I broke down, and felt that I 

had said something very childish, and that the 
reference to a paltry stone was anything but manly. 

" You cannot mean what you say, Mr. Mortimer; 
you did look ill, but you did not look happy," she 
replied, still looking down, but evidently a little 
confused. 

"I swear to you that it is so," I exclaimed, gazing 
earnestly into her lovely face, and feeling as if I was 
about to fly. 

"Hush! Mr. Mortimer," she said impressively; 
" there is no tumult here to drown your words, they 
may rise higher than earth ! " and a shade came over 
her face that made her look more heavenly than ever. 

"They must rise higher, or you would not hear 
them," I replied, forgetting all my previous confusion 
and timidity, and trying to flash out my soul upon my 
tongue. " I would give up all this world can offer in 
exchange for the light of your eyes, and the pressure 
of your hand, and the music of your voice, and " 

"Stop! Mr. Mortimer." 

Oh, the lovely artlessness of that soft little hand 



II 8 ELIJER GOFF. 



that was placed upon my mouth. It stayed a 
torrent of words that came like an overflow from 
the heart. I don't know what I should not have 
said if it had not been there to press back the 
stream and bid me pause ; but I kept it to my lips, and 
kissed it, and would not let it go ; and then there was 
pleading, and reasoning, and questioning, and at last 
calmness ; but I still held that little warm, soft hand, 
and vowed I would never let it go. 

" Would that I could win your heart as I have won 
your hand," I exclaimed, "for then we should never 
part, even though the mighty ocean came upon us and 
overwhelmed the earth. In death, the grasp of this 
hand would be tightened, and the souls that passed 
upward together would never be torn asunder." 

"Oh, why do you speak thus?" said Miss Staveley, 
trembling very much, and looking as if her eyes were 
full of tears, and her head bending down still lower as 
if to hide them. 

"Because I love you — madly, passionately, devotedly 
love you ! I loved you the first moment I looked into 
your eyes, and I shall love you for evermore. Years 
ago I saw you in visions that came to me in the dead 
of night, and in after-time I felt a yearning for what I 



ELIJER GOFF. 119 



had seen in those dreams. But I never dreamt that 
it would come again in the sunlight as it has come 
now ; I never dared to hope that the phantom that 
appeared to me in my sleep would ever return in the 
warm palpitating beauty of life that I can press thus." 

But, just then, that also was not to be, for Miss 
Staveley sank fainting upon the sand, and it was my 
turn to run to the laughing water, and bring the sopped 
handkerchief to the pale brow, and watch the drops of 
water running down her neck, and sparkling on the 
end of her nose, and toppling over the forehead into 
her eyes; and it was her turn to look on me as a 
ministering angel, and gaze up into my face with a 
smile of thankfulness, and (oh, that I could dare think 
so) to keep ill as long as she could. 

How those moments fled ! I knelt by her side, 
pleading for my love, and drinking in the sweet music 
that fell from her lips. We spoke of our childhood, 
of our young sorrows and early joys, of the years to 
come, and of the new hopes that had sprung up within 
our hearts, and long we sat in that delicious dream of 
love. Then a shadow fell upon us, and it was Tom 
Malperton's turn to laugh at us again, and to interrupt 
our happiness by his untimely appearance; but I 



120 ELIJER GOFF. 



could smile with him now, and there was a beautiful 
autumn morning some months after when his presence 
was not an interruption, and when his laugh sounded 
like the music of old times ; for the love that budded 
into life that day went on flowering in the sunshine 
on the sands, and the fair promises I gave in the ful- 
ness of my heart were followed by more solemn vows 
given in calmer moods. So at last, when that autumn 
morning came, Tom Malperton came with it, as my 
best friend, to see his cousin Louie as Miss Staveley 
for the last time, and to hear me promise to love and 
cherish her, as I meant, and mean to do, and to see 
me driven away from tears, good wishes, and old 
shoes, with my blushing wife — his charming cousin 
Louie, whom he still persists in calling a regular 
stunner. 

She is more, for years afterwards, as I write this, 
she is the mother of a number of little Mortimers, 
all of whom are very noisy, very fond of dirt, and 
death on jam. 



" Oh, that is purty ! " exklaimed the widder glee- 
fully. " I've a great mind tu read it agen." 



ELIJER GOFF. 121 



"Thank yu," I sez, feelin as if I'd hed enuff; "I 
don't think we shall hev time tu-nite. Evenins air 
very okkurd in that respeck. Thur's no stretchin 'em 
tu soot individool voos." 

" But isn't it purty ? " she asked, wishin tu bind me 
tu sum pertikler opinyun on a subjeck as interested 
her so much. 

"Well," I sez, "puttin aside konsekwences, it is 
sumwot agreeabul ; but, as a rool, anythin as appeals 
tu the hart treats the hed as if it hed nothin tu du 
with the questyun. When a man's in luv, his 
opinyuns on anythin livin must be receeved with kon- 
siderabul kawshun." 

" Does luv muddle a man?" asked the widder with 
surprige. 

" Muddle him," I sez ; " why it makes a downrite 
fool on him. It seems to treat reason like rubbige, 
and changes a pusson tu that extent as his dearest 
frends wudden't kno him if he hedn't any distin- 
guishin features in the way of kostoom." 

" I shud like tu see yu in luv, Mr. Goff," sed the 
widder larfin. 

"It wud be a magnificent specktakle, as shud be 
enkouraged with slo fiddlin and^ fireworks/' I sez, 



122 ELIJER GOFF. 



fur onct in my life jokin on a seryus subjeck. " I 
bleev I shud be as onreliabul as the rest on 'em." 

"Is this the larst?" she sed, in disappinted tones, 
as I handed her sum vusses called " Villiam's 
Lament," as formed the larst packet. 

"'Yes," I sez, "that's the larst, and it sounds like 
another sad 'un ; yet I didn't notis any jin spots on 
it. Praps he hedn't any more tu shed." 



y 



illiam's Lament. 




! Aint it a sin, when a feller hez bin 
A doin his best to prosper and win, 
By backin a hoss fur an 'andfull o' tin, 
Fur that hoss to deliberately die. 

It wouldn't a mattered so much as it do, 
If I hadn't lost all, but stuck to a few ; 
But things as they stands looks uncommonly blue, 
For my pig, so to speak, is no more. 

The facts air as follers, and stubbon they be : 
If the hoss had a run into one, two, three, 
That hoss wud a bin nigh a " pony" to me, 
For I backed him to win, and a shop. 



ELIJER GOFF. I 23 



And if he'd a won, as that hoss could hev done — 
Fur a better I never see stripped in the sun — 
I'd a pulled off a pot of two hunderd to one, 
And hev started a hoss of my own. 

But — R ! — I'm fair sick, when I think of how thick 
I put down the shiners, and lost by a trick ; 
Fur there wasn't a hoss in the world that could lick 
The great hoss that I backed fur to win. 

Now look, hcris a puss ! why it looks vus and vus, 
Fur there isn't a copper, there isn't a cuss. 
A'ch ! Villiam ! you'd a better bin drivin your buss, 
Than a backing a dead-un that day. 



The] widder sed she didn't quite understand 
" Villiam's Lament," and thurfore didn't enjy it like 
the othurs. I guv her the meanin of it, and she red it 
agen, and liked it better; but sed she enjyd the 
poetry as made her sad the most. 

Whot a strange and luvly blessin is a woman. 

It wos gettin late, fur the time hed parst quickly, and 
we^ hed bin interested in the ritins of the poor ded 
gentleman. The widder sed she felt sorry thur wos 



124 ELIJER GOFF. 



no more tu read, and asked me if I thote as Jerrybim 
hed any other packets among his rubbige. 

" I'll see tumorrer," I sez. " Jerrybim's jest as likely 
tu hev a heap on 'em as he's kept tu lite fires with. 
He'll guv 'em tu me if he hez, fur his feelins on the 
subjeck won't amount tu more than tuppence a pound, 
and Jerrybim's an old frend." 

The klok struck twelve afore we hed finished talkin 
ovur the papers the widder hed red. They hed made 
an impreshun on her, and she spoke very tendurly of 
the poor mad riter as hed parst away, fur she thote "it 
wos sad, very sad," she sed, "that wun as hed luvd as 
he hed luvd, and hed dreamed the bitter dreams as he 
hed dreamed, shud go out intu the dark mystery so 
yung, and shud leave the beautiful sunshine, and the 
sweet flowers and the delishus fragrance, and the 
richest muzik of the erth behind. But," she added 
solumly, " Perhaps 'tis best, fur who ken tell whether 
the pathway of his futur wud hev bin thru tears, 
or whether the added days of his sad life wud hev 
bin spent whur light and sunshine, and flowers and 
fragrance, never kum." 

THE END. 



ELIJER GOFF. 125 



N< 



IOTICE. 




ELIJER GOFF, du hereby guv notice that I'll not 
be responsibul fur any debts inkurred by Mariar my 
wife, so dear (at any price) tu me ; nor fur any debts 
inkurred by any of her onhappy relashuns, by blud or marrige, 
inkloodin the undersined, who takes this opportunity of returnin 
thanks fur all bad debts bestowed ontu him durin the parst 
year. 

In solicitin a kontinnerance of futur favors, he, the onct afore- 
menshund undersined Elijer, du hereby respeckfully inform his 
kustomers and frends that he hez jest made arrangements fur 
openin sevrel new mines of Turkey rhubob in parts whur its not 
immejutly required fur the bowls of the erth ; and hez at the 
same time sekured sevrel splendid kod liver ile springs in 
Ameriky, which '11 enabol him tu bring that delishus beverage 
within the means of anybody as ken afford tu pay fur it. 

In konsequence of the enormus demand fur elektricity, he, the 
twice afore- menshund undersined E. G., is appintin agents tu 
represent him at the North Pole (poor relativs and miserabul 
bakbiters preferred). He hopes that by konstant inattenshun tu 
his bizness they will give every satisfakshun, and that thur virtoo 
will be its own reward. 



(Sined) 

ELIJER GOFF. 



126 ELIJER GOFF. 



ELIJER GOFF: 

HIS TRAVELS, TRUBBLES, AND OTHER AMOOZEMENTS. 



The Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-hvo Thousand, 



London : Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 




UR nervusness, yuthful giddiness, hopeless melonkoly, 
xtreme poverty, and jenrel debility, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur pains in the bak, legs, arms, hed, chest, sides, shoulders, 
internal komplaints (inside and outside), and evry othur infirmity, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur cirkumstances ovur which yu've no kontrol, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur stammerin, stubbornness, baldness, blindness, want of 
perseverance, old sores, deliryum dreamins, bankrupcy, and 
fraud, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur dropsy, brandy-and-water-on-the-brane, xcessif eatin, 
drinkin, sleepin, and totul prostrashun, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur ignorance, spiritoolism, superstishun, and real intellectool 
cnjyment, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur loss of membry, loss of appytite, loss of temper, loss of 
fortune, loss of presents of mind, loss of sitooashun, loss of life, 
loss of evrythin, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 

Fur the sake of him as luvs his publisher, as only a orthur 
ken, 

READ "ELIJER GOFF." 



ELIJER GOFF. 



127 



TESTIMONIALS. 




WENTY yeers ago my father bruk his neck. Fur a 
long time he wos konfined tu his grave. At larst 
my mother wos persuaded tu read " Elijer Goff," 



and I am appy tu say she ken now walk without krutches. 



J. c. 




JENTLEMAN of affluents, with limited means, 
hevin been in want of money fur sum time, borrerd 
a trifle frum a frend, which he wos. onabul tu repay. 
Fur five and twenty yeers it prayd upon his mind. He lost all 
taste fur work, hed no appytite fur pure water, kuddent sleep 
before midnite, forgot all his poor relashuns, wosn't abul tu enjy 
a bad sermont, didn't agree with anyboddy as tuk the trubble 
tu diffur frum him, kudn't pay his way, and didn't. At larst, 
in a lucky moment, he wos indoosed tu read " Elijer Goff," and 
all at onct a rich relashun dyed, and left him a large fortune tu 
mourn his ontimely end. 

M. D. 



128 ELIJER GOFF. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



" It is full of humour, and well worthy of perusal. Judy will 
be glad to meet its author again." — Judy. 

" Had we space, we could quote heaps of good things from 
* Elijer Goff ; ' but we must leave him with a cordial recom- 
mendation to all readers." — Figaro. 

"Genuine humour, which we believe to be natural to its 
author. * * * * Contains some keen satire and amusing 
quaintness. " — Church Opinion. 

"This very successful comic work. * * * The book is a 
capital shilling's worth of fun, and we cannot refrain from 
quoting," &c, &c. — Budget. 

1 * This little book is one of the most entertaining we have ever 
seen. It abounds, moreover, in clever writing, is full of fun, and 
is marvellously cheap at the shilling which is charged for 
it." — Free Lance. 

" An exceedingly humorous book." — Ben Brier ley's Journal. 

" This book is, we think, without any exception, the most 
amusing book of the day. Every page is saturated with genuine 
humour, and every line has its point Elijer tells his story with 
a quaintness that cannot fail to provoke hearty laughter. The 
political satire occasionally cropping up is very droll, and the 
address to the electors is racy in the extreme, and full of capital 
hits. The ' widder ' is a delicious little character, and is the 
medium of some real pathos, set in the midst of the most laugh- 
able ideas. The description of the fight is simply irresistible, 
and has no similarity to any other description of a pugilistic 
encounter ever written. * * * All stamp the book as one of 
the cleverest and most humorous books of the time. We heartily 
recommend it to our readers, and hope, with Judy, to meet its 
author again." — Fleetwood Chronicle and Blackpool Herald. 

"A new book of fun and satire." — North Wales Chronicle, 

" An amusing shilling's worth. His adventures are comic." — 
Stroud Journal. 

" A new book which has already run through two editions, and 
which promises to take a leading place among the humorous 
literature of the day," — Gloucester Standard. 



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WILLIAM •■. DAVS 

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THt EIGHTEEN HUNDRED Af^Q SEVENTY TWO THOUSAND. 



